Such stories sound like horror science fiction to Europeans. Of course preventable deaths and health related mistakes happen there too but they are rarely the fault of insurance. If such a blunt event would happen to me, I could sue the insurance for a very large sum.
My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
171–179 of 179 posts
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Committing suicide almost certainly guarantees further suicides within that close family. Not sure why this is downvoted. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-... "The experience of losing a parent to suicide is a strong and independent risk factor for suicidal behaviour in offspring."
Because causation != correlation. This could just as easily be explained as "severe depression has a genetic factor".
When teenage suicide clusters hit all the small towns within 50 miles of each other, you're positing that they were actually half-siblings and didn't know it, eh?
I'm glad people like you downvote me, it lets me know that I'm right.
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you are saying overcharging an insurance company is on the same level as an insurance company denying medical care and directly killing the patient because they don't want to pay? And your examples justify obviously incompetent insurance people vetoing doctor's orders, exactly how? Doctors are generally forbidden to treat patients without directly examining them and knowing their cases. How is it that insurance c…
As it is, insurance rates are rising far faster than inflation rates. Have you checked how much insurance rates have gone on the last few years? It goes up 6% to 25% per year. Where is all this money going? Is it all going to insurance companies? Nope. The price increases are attributable to hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies and so on. These price increases are a form of healthcare denial because a lot of…
> Is it all going to insurance companies? Nope. The price increases are attributable to hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies and so on.
The insurers are buying up the doctors (and paying their doctors more, as a bonus - https://sph.brown.edu/news/2025-11-10/unitedhealthcare-optum...) and the pharmaceutical side (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacy_benefit_management) of things.
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#174Attributed to Churchill: "Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted."
Haven't all other (non-universal) health coverage possibilities been exhausted ?
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
What gets me is that they probably could afford it out of pocket but didn’t want to deplete savings. For a clear case like this, an insurance denial shouldn’t even be shared with the suicidal patient, their spouse should shield them from that and just pay from their checking account. The life of your spouse is worth more than a few more dollars in retirement.
Calling it a "few dollars" is probably disingenuous, although we don't know the personal circumstances. For many, this could be a "life-changing" quantity of money.
Let’s say the cost is $1k per day. That’s say $50k over the 7 weeks.
A doctor probably ends up with a $10M or bigger nest egg in retirement. At 4% withdrawal rate, that’s $400k per year, or $33.33k.
Spread the $50k expense over say 30 years, that’s $140 less per month.
So that means the spend would be $33.2k instead. The difference here isn’t going to register for the household budget.
Obviously a lot of assumptions, but this is the pragmatic view.
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's hard for me to believe that a doctor couldn't afford medical care for her husband Why's that? Between mortgage, repaying education debt, supporting children, recovering from a husband's failed business venture...what is hard to believe about having trouble paying for another expense, especially after you've been reassured that the expense would be at least partially recompensated and that turns out to not be t…
At a high income level, you should have more buffer for life’s events if you’ve made good decisions in your life. Generally speaking. For example, that mortgage, did you stretch the very limit of your income or did you buy something reasonable? Nobody forced you to buy a house, you could also rent or commute longer. I lived in a crappy rental for five years and commuted and was able to fully pay off my student loans…
This take makes my blood boil.
They had the buffer! She’s top level medical doctor with top health insurance for her family, shelling out who knows how many thousands of dollars a month for it.
Those payments must have covered them, but they were denied instead.
American health insurance is a total scam.
UPDATE: also a minor proof in the days of wealth accumulation to the top 0.00001%, that (seemingly) wealthy Californian doctors and entrepreneurs are much much closer to bankruptcy than many of us could think.
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd imagine you'd struggle to find a healthcare system in which a doctor's prescribed care is assuredly covered by insurance, by the insurance provider, and then later rescinded after care has already started.
The ACA made rescission of health insurance more difficult for insurers, but it absolutely happens. There are people at insurers tasked with looking for fraudulent omissions in policy applications for high loss ratio individual policyholders to target for rescission. This one is pre-ACA but the insurer focused on an "omission" to justify the rescission: https://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/16/health.care.hearing/...
This is strange - I work in insurance, and you really aren’t allowed to do that after the policy is signed. Or at least it’s very tightly controlled and limited to straight up fraud.
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because causation != correlation. This could just as easily be explained as "severe depression has a genetic factor".
When teenage suicide clusters hit all the small towns within 50 miles of each other, you're positing that they were actually half-siblings and didn't know it, eh? I'm glad people like you downvote me, it lets me know that I'm right.
> I'm glad people like you downvote me
HN doesn't let you downvote people who respond directly to you. Don't make assumptions like that.
Re: My husbands suicide shows theres something very wrong with US insurance industry
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There are levels of depression (or other circumstances) at which people are actual drains on their family. Committing suicide almost certainly guarantees further suicides within that close family. Children especially... years later. In certain social circles (teenage suicide), it heightens the risk of further teenage suicides, even among non-peers in some cases. Unless the facehugger has just laid an egg in your gut…
> Committing suicide almost certainly guarantees further suicides within that close family. Not sure why this is downvoted. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-... "The experience of losing a parent to suicide is a strong and independent risk factor for suicidal behaviour in offspring."
> Not sure why this is downvoted.
Almost certainly guarantees was very false. The review said The absolute risk of dying by suicide in offspring of suicide decedents ranged from 0.23 to 2.9% (mean 0.87%; median 0.56%) in the included cohort studies.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.[1] Unless the facehugger has just laid an egg in your gut, suicide is never rational was not thoughtful and substantive.