A Shuddering, Full-Body Catharsis

A Rant

People are celebrating a murder. Of a healthcare CEO. In America. The home of pearl clutching over violence. The home of thoughts and prayers. The home of I can get a bedazzled gun with an extender faster than I could get a CDL. Immediately, if you’ve ever lived a day in America, you knew why this particular murder was getting the response it has been. But I acknowledge that there are those among us that just don’t seem to understand it. So I thought I’d come on and explain with an anecdote of mine to paint the scene.

Late last year I went to the OBGYN with concerns. Having a uterus is incredibly concerning just by virtue of having one but I felt things weren’t normal so in an abundance of caution, I went to get it checked out. At the appointment they found a cyst and since I don’t have a history of cysts, it was concerning enough to warrant a follow-up in a few months. In those few months, my job decided to change insurances. Now, they assured us that there wouldn’t be any large changes to our coverage and the cost was the exact same, so I didn’t think anything of it. So I went, did the follow-up, and thankfully the cyst had resolved itself and was gone. Not too long after, I received a letter from my OBGYN that my new insurance refused to cover HALF of the ultrasound and that I was responsible for the rest.

My first thought was which half did they want me to pay for? If I had only told them to look at the ovary that had the cyst would they have covered it all? Can you speed run an ultrasound? Of course when I started to be for real, I was incensed and tried to get out of paying it because huh?? Needless to say, they refused to cover it and I had to pay the ENTIRE $600 myself. This is a small example but it’s indicative of what the average American might face just trying to get health care in this country. However, when it stops being run-of-the-mill ovarian cysts and starts being lifesaving cancer procedures, you start to get a picture of why people might feel some bloodlust around this.

Most Americans that have insurance, pay a lot to keep that insurance. According to USA Today, the average American with employer-sponsored insurance pays $177 a month. If your insurance isn’t sponsored it jumps up to $477 a month. This adds up to thousands of dollars a year that could be going towards savings or personal pursuits but instead it goes to a faceless corporation that has given you what is essentially a pinky promise to pay for any medical need you may have. In actuality, these corporations, like any other, are obsessed with the line going up and they WILL attribute your monthly payments to that line while trying to keep spending to a minimum. The thing is, spending the money you give them is the entire point of their existence. We only pay them so they can spend on us, be it a procedure or a medical device or a regular check-up. It is insane then, that we’ve come to accept that so many of these companies refuse to cover so many health needs.

UnitedHealthcare in particular is especially egregious in this. In fact, they deny 1 in 3 insurance claims and are currently being sued for using “A.I.” to deny claims (https://qz.com/unitedhealthcare-denied-claim-1851714818). This means that no matter what it was, thousands of people were left hanging despite paying increasing premiums so that they wouldn’t be. This has probably cost many their health, their autonomy, and likely, their lives. And for what, so someone somewhere can get a gaudier boat and pollute our waters in style? So that CEOs can wear expensive suits and go to conferences to decide how to better screw people over? It gets to a point where enough has to be enough, right?

The problem is that a lot of people don’t have an outlet. Part of the American experience is the quiet desperation of wanting to escape your conditions but being too broke or too busy to find a way to do that. So when it seemed like someone actually DID something, Americans experienced a release for the first time. Not because we’re all savage and violent and want to see people die. No, nobody wants that but when you think of your uncle who passed away when the insurance companies wouldn’t cover his transplant, it’s hard to feel any empathy for the partial architect of that suffering.

Even this past week, I had to deal with the incompetence and carelessness of the healthcare industry. When I needed my insurance the most, they weren’t there. I had to advocate for myself to get the free procedure that I deserved due to medical malpractice and when I was sitting in my house healing, all I could do was “Am I supposed to feel bad?” So no, I don’t “condemn” the millions of Americans feeling less than sympathetic with this news. Instead, I’ve been thinking of the people they lost and the ways they may be suffering everyday. I think they deserve our thoughts and prayers.

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