It’s been nearly two months since Publix filled my prescription. At the one month mark I sent my refill to CVS instead and they filled it the next day. I have no fucking clue what’s wrong.

Worked in insurance for a few months and saw someone with an $8000 deductible.

Was denied life-changing, medically necessary weight loss surgery because my company has less than 50 people employed.

I had to live with a failed gallbladder for a month and a half while the insurance decided if they were gonna pay for surgery. I lost 20lbs in that time because I couldn’t keep anything in my body. I almost died.

One health care facility near me doesn’t accept patients who work at or have previously worked at their competition.

Had my ankle reconstructed last year and the surgery alone billed for $16,000. A piece of foam for my walking boot billed for $150.

My headache medicine would cost me around $1000/month if I didn’t have insurance. With insurance it’s $40/month. My pharmacist helped me sign up for a discount card through the manufacturer so now it’s only $5/month somehow

Got some medical bills sent to collections before the bills ever reached me. By email or paper mail. Haven’t paid any of them and I don’t plan on ever paying them because fuck the people who just sent that shit to collections. Also medical debt is dumb and you just don’t have to pay that shit. They eventually stop bugging you about it and I haven’t seen it reflect on my credit score ever.

A 20 min ambulance ride, with amazing insurance was billed for $575.

My sister almost broke her spinal cord and the insurance gave us the runaround after the corrective vertebrae surgery.

The VA didn’t want to cover the cost of my grandfather’s leg amputations that were a direct result of contact with agent orange in Vietnam.

The VA doesn’t want to cover a coworker’s therapy and medication for PTSD caused by being stationed in the middle east for 4 years.

The VA won’t release my mom’s army medical records because she was part of experimental vaccines when she was in the army. She thinks it was anthrax vaccines, but can’t be sure because nobody will tell her.

I moved out of the US and when I had to pay to get a tooth filled my flabber was gasted when they charged me 17 bucks.

I don’t think I can ever go home.

My wife had surgery. However they didn’t prescribe painkillers until after the surgery.

I got her comfortable at home and ran down to pick them up … and was rejected as “drug seeker”. Wtf. It took a full day before I could convince them to fill it, and they kept wanting her to come in person when she just had surgery

I could not walk for more than 5 minutes without excruciating pain. I finally asked to be taken to the hospital after a back spasm that had me bash my face after a fall.

Went to the hospital. Was diagnosed with “mild scoliosis” and “anxiety” and sent home with stronger than average Tylenol. Was bedridden for nearly 2 months. Lost my job. Got other appointments for GP. Looked and said I needed a specialist. I could not afford a specialist, as I was now out of money. They shrugged and wished me luck.

I was forced to stay like this for nearly 2 full years.

When I was on the verge of killing myself, someone offered to pay for a chiropractor. I didn’t care. I had nothing to lose.

Anyhow, long story short, guy found that my spine had been forcefully lodged into my pelvis and stuck there. Dude had me healed in week.

This is NOT an endorsement for chiropractors— this is a testament to the failure of the healthcare system. I could not see anyone, so my desperation led me there.

I still have back issues. But I can walk again and be touched without pain.

I’m intersex and have both male and female anatomy. US healthcare “insurance” isn’t coded for people like me. It assumes a sex binary when the facts of reality show otherwise.

Back at my old job, I had full premium health insurance. However, they kept denying each and every claim, denying literally everything. They unofficially recognized my intersex condition and used it against me.

Whenever I filed a claim as female, they’d deny it and claim I was male and thus the claim was incorrectly filled out. When I filed as male, they’d pull the exact same stunt now claiming I’m female and thus the claim was incorrectly filled out. Whatever the claim, large or small, it was always the wrong sex on the paperwork.

It was a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation. I have a better job with the government and with a different insurance company, but they too are starting to pull the same stunt. I hate this country for allowing such corruption to thrive.

I filled out a form wrong and didn’t have healthcare this entire year. I tried to fix it and my company told me sorry, the period for enrollment is over, wait until the end of the year to enroll for next year. Found out when I went to buy a prescription and they started asking me a bunch of question and then charged me 150% of the normal cost. Good thing I stayed (relatively) healthy this year!

I’m rawdogging life with pretty bad ADHD, depression, anxiety and probably autism because I have always been poor lol

My husband was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in his early 40s. There was a medication that kept his symptoms more or less in control.

Then he lost his job. The meds ran out and it turns out they cost thousands of dollars without his work insurance plan. This was just before Obamacare, and there was no way we could afford unsubsidized insurance for him on my salary.

His colitis got exponentially worse, and was treated only spotadically when I could scrape together a few hundred dollars for the doctor visit, where he might be able to get enough free samples of the med or a round of steroids to reduce the gut inflammation.

One night as we were lying in bed winding down to sleep, I heard him drop his magazine on the floor and start what I now know was agonal breathing. I called 911 and did my best with CPR, but his heart had stopped and in all likelihood he was dead before the paramedics arrived. He was 53 years old.

I found out from his death certificate that he had severe ischemic heart disease. It was undiagnosed because he hadn’t had regular medical care for years because of the vicious circle of unmedicated symptoms/inability to work/no insurance.

That’s my horror story. There’s also my 4+year quest to be diagnosed with MS, being told by multiple doctors that if I lost weight I wouldn’t be so fatigued I could barely move, or have vertigo, or fall down for no reason, or whatever symptom I had at the time. But hey, at least that story eventually ended with diagnosis and treatment… as long as I have my job and insurance, anyway.

A friend of mine was feeling ill, but didn’t go to the hospital because he couldn’t afford it. Once the leukemia started advancing though he only lasted a week.

Backstory: I have hemochromatosis. My body doesn’t eliminate iron like most people’s. As a result I am at risk of getting iron deposition in my organs; most commonly the liver and kidneys are affected.
The simple treatment for hemochromatosis is therapeutic phlebotomy; bloodletting. When my ferretin (iron) count in my blood gets high I have to donate blood to get it lower. This wouldn’t be an issue except I need to do so weekly/bi-weekly and not the requisite waiting period blood donor centers require.
Because of this I have to get ‘therapeutic phlebotomies’ ordered by my hepatologist.

I could not afford to pay my entire balance with the healthcare provider my doctor’s office is part of. Their system would not allow me to make a partial payment and would not allow me to check in for my appointment unless I paid the amount in full ($450+). Because of this I could not attend my doctor’s visit and because we did not have a visit they cannot prescribe the routine maintenance my condition requires.

TLDR: I have a genetic condition with one of the easiest treatment plans which is giving my blood away, something that saves lives, but I cannot receive treatment because I cannot pay my full balance with the healthcare provider.

Dad was prescribed a medication that fixed his health issue. Changed jobs and insurance. New insurance says that medication isn’t for that issue and that he needed to take a different medication that his doctor had previously tried and didn’t work very well along with nasty side effects instead. They argued about it. Now he’s stuck with the worse medication.

There are far worse out there, but about a year ago I injured my hand somehow. I couldn’t close my fist, which made it hard for me to work and support my partner as I do a majority of the cooking and chores. I couldn’t make a firm enough grip to use cast iron cookware. I was really concerned about this for a number of obvious reasons, so I went to the doctor.

I looked up an in network doc, call them up, confirm they take my insurance, double check that the kind of care I was looking for was covered. At my appointment they ask to do a physical as well, since I was due for one. During that they asked all the normal questions, the poignant one here being “do you smoke?” I replied “I have one or two cigarettes socially when drinking with some friends, which happens maybe once every other month or less.” This changed the tone of the entire visit.

My concern about my hand was largely disregarded and the doctor began talking to me about smoking cessation and the dangers of tobacco. Gave me pamphlets, tried to ask if I’d consider quitting, asked if I’ve tried alternatives. I tried to turn things back to my hand and she wasn’t interested. After I strongly insisted that was my sole medical interest, she gave me a referral.

I pay my copay up front and leave. I go to the specialist a few days later. He looks at my hand for 45 seconds and gives me a wrist brace and tells me to sleep with it on. I pay my copay and leave. Wouldn’t ya know? That did it! My hand was working again.

I call the specialist to follow up on his care and say it worked well. He told me I need to speak with billing to settle my bill. I’m confused. Wasn’t the copay for that? He says the insurance covered the visit but not the medical device (the wrist brace). So I check with billing and they want four hundred dollars. I’m flabbergasted. I check where they got the product, because surely it couldn’t cost that. I found the identical product, brand and all, on Amazon for $13. I’m livid. I argue with them, they say they can’t do anything.

I call the insurance and they say my policy was clear about specialists and medical devices. Dejected and feeling stupid, I just pay.

About a week later I get a call from the first doc saying I needed to settle up as well. I owe them five hundred dollars!!! How?? They say the bloodwork they did wasn’t covered. I plead saying that’s a normal part of a physical, no? They say yes, but I didn’t come in for a physical, according to the billing, I came in for a smoking cessation meeting!!

I tried for weeks to get the doctor on the phone to rectify this but they wouldn’t speak to me. My insurance company said they didn’t cover bloodwork as part of that and the doctors office wouldn’t change the billing.

I’m sick of doctors, I’m sick of insurance companies. If I get sick, I make chicken soup, drink tea, and scarf OTC drugs. I sprang my ankle fishing earlier this year. Did I go to a doctor? Absolutely not! I can’t afford a $900 bill every time something goes wrong.

I pay $360 a month for this. Thankfully I make enough that this wasn’t so damaging on my life, but I stopped buying as much meat and ate mostly beans for a year and didn’t travel for my vacation. I had been hoping to visit my father across the country that year but we had to put it off. It changed my outlook on medical services drastically and I’ll never be so honest to doctors again.

I used to live in China, where socialized medicine was in theory available for everyone, but in practice most everyone who had a decent job had private insurance from their employer not unlike in the US, which was my situation. It was…fine, but I was a healthy young adult and didn’t have much going on medically. I’ve heard some horror stories from others about the degree of care they received, and had one experience where my doctor simply attributed my migraines to my “unhealthy American lifestyle”, but I never had to worry about coverage.

When I moved back home to Massachusetts a few years later, I didn’t have a job lined up right away, but I did gain immediate coverage through MassHealth (the system the Affordable Care Act was based upon) and it was very cheap. I didn’t have to pay for coverage, but did have a couple copays here and there which weren’t anything crazy.

I started up one job, was laid off after just a couple months when the pandemic happened, and MassHealth was still there to give me some peace of mind. It’s not a perfect system, but it beats running the risk of suffering a health episode that leaves you financially destitute for years and years. I don’t know how well I would have managed elsewhere.

I eventually landed a more stable-long term career and get employer-provided insurance through Tufts. And it’s okay, but I recently had to fight a months-long prolonged battle to get a prior authorization approved for a med I had been taking for years that they just decided out of the blue I didn’t need to take anymore. And it took a lot of back and forth from my doctor to really stress that I needed to stay on this med before they eventually caved and gave me a 1-year approval, but now I’m worried I’ll have to go through this whole song and dance again when that time elapses in a few more months.

I think it’s just a bit ridiculous that the insurance company can simply decide they know my health situation better than myself or my doctor who I’ve been seeing for years now, and out of the blue make life-changing decisions without even having spoken to me or my doctor first.

I work in healthcare, and the response from the workers in my hospital to the UHC CEO assassination has been… pretty much the same as the response here on Lemmy!

Couple morale-high-horse folks pearl clutching about no one deserves to die or some shit; but 99% of us are on team Luigi.

We fucking hate parts of this industry, with a strong emphasis on insurance bullshit.

My two cents from the inside.