151–160 of 273 posts
"Compliance" is the other half of the US insurance nightmare with CPAP. Often insurers demand access to logs of the machine to verify you are actually using it before they will reimburse you. CPAP machines have an elaborate tamper-proof logging mechanism including a cellular modem for data uploads outside your control. Largely to enable surveillance by US insurance companies. In addition to the surveillance being off…
But no communication from the insurance company told me that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like you were expected to pay a gratuity several times in that process and they were baffled you didn't.
My friend does export/import into SEA. You don’t just have to know who/when to bribe, you have to have an insider set up already. They used to have a guy in customs who would take a monthly payment to forward all her packages through without a second look. He disappeared and then trying to find the next one took months. Nothing was getting through customs, and showing up at the office they would deny any attempts to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tried but they wouldn't accept it.
I've dealt with this many times as a South Asian person and it is very possible they still do actually want money. Most people will not ask in a straightforward manner for money and when you offer to pay them, they act all offended. This is a stupid game that I have no idea how it started where they will pretend to not want the money but will still very obviously want it. This has stumped me, being mildly autistic, f…
You tell the person "I was told I had to pay this to release my package but I don't know who or where I pay" while waving the cash around cluelessly. The person will 100% then offer to take it and "handle it from there" under the stupid guise of plausibility.
Yeah try importing a CPAP from the states into Vietnam if you want a real adventure. A $650 cpap machine costs well over $2K here. So I thought I'd import one. Apparently you need a prescription in the states? Ok, get a "prescription" from an online service that basically just asks you if you snore over a video call. Amazing. Buy machine and have it sent to a freight forwarding service. They fuck up the paperwork. It…
I learned the hard way after a few experiences like yours to telegraph as little frustration or anger as humanly possible. Reasoning also only goes so far.
But if you appeal on some technicality, even a rule of your own invention..
Carol Beer presents differently across cultures (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pw8m_NTJ_0).
You can now understand why the UK is holding on the its NHS with white knuckles despite the Conservative push to dissolve it by stealth.
I've worked on the claims management process flow for payer like Anthem before. It's probably obvious, but this story hints at some serious deficiencies in the backend processes. One way to look at it is that this Byzantine process helps Anthem by trapping valid claims in a black hole of bureaucracy. That way they don't need to pay, right? It's not quite that simple. It's true that incentives are not usually aligned,…
can you please elaborate on this? does this mean that some companies (employers) directly see and pay their employees medical stuff on their books?
> Ultimately for Anthem, this claim cost them a lot more to handle than if they had just paid out in the first place
... well, of course, but the whole middleman game costs the US many many many serious percents of each year's GDP. and probably the whole culture of reimbursement despair makes a lot of money to insurance companies, and even probably keeps rates a bit lower than they ought to be, and keeps people sick (and of course eventually leads to more serious problems that in turn cost a lot more, but if those are shifted to pensioner age then they might be covered federally, right? again a win for the insurers)
Yeah try importing a CPAP from the states into Vietnam if you want a real adventure. A $650 cpap machine costs well over $2K here. So I thought I'd import one. Apparently you need a prescription in the states? Ok, get a "prescription" from an online service that basically just asks you if you snore over a video call. Amazing. Buy machine and have it sent to a freight forwarding service. They fuck up the paperwork. It…
I had a similar experience but in Japan. My CPAP machine was held by customs, they asked me to provide some extra paperwork from another department, which boiles down to a form and a "prescription". Fortunately they accept american prescriptions. I emailed all of the docs to the department, and they told me since I'm physically in Japan, I have to do what Japanese would do - send a physical mail in an envolope. A wee…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo! As someone with multiple "pre-existing conditions" who cares for a stroke survivor (my wife) and a stage 4 chronic kidney disease patient (my mother-in-law,) I suggest we do the following: 1. make private health insurance illegal 2. pass a Constitutional amendment allowing every human the unlimited and absolute right to buy, make, modify, and sell medical things including importing and exporting those items. I…
> pass a Constitutional amendment allowing every human the unlimited and absolute right to buy, make, modify, and sell medical things including importing and exporting those items. The ironically terrifying evidence about what a horrible idea this is is that it was just in the news that the FDA said that recalled CPAP machines made by Philips killed 561 people: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-sleep-apnea-philips-rec…
Plain old consumer device safety stuff would apply here.
You can now understand why the UK is holding on the its NHS with white knuckles despite the Conservative push to dissolve it by stealth.
I dunno, I’ve just spent 18 months in Dubai, where I had private insurance, and it was a breeze. See a UK-trained specialist for almost anything within a day or two, and hospital direct billing meant I almost never had to interact with the insurer directly. I guess my point is that as reassuring (as a Brit) as it is to know the NHS is there, private insurance isn’t necessarily bad if regulated well (and that matches…