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Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

vienna.earth

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Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#11

Post by rgrieselhuber »

jbarrow wrote: post #2

This explains a lot; I’ve been thinking for years (ever since being diagnosed with a chronic health condition) about writing an essay likening the American insurance system to Kafka’s _The Trial_. The bureaucracy is absolutely soul-crushing, and has left me in tears on multiple occasions. While nearly no individual person you deal with is at fault or malicious, the whole experience ends up being something I wouldn’t…

The Metamorphosis always read (to me) as the dread felt by a society as it unwittingly becomes increasingly bureaucratic and atomized.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#12

Post by tiahura »

brigadier132 wrote: post #5
tiahura wrote: post #3

He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. This was before doctors became incurably greedy - so a bit early for first party health insurance.

> This was before doctors became incurably greedy Doctors are not the reason healthcare is expensive.

From the AMA:

https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/ama-assn.org/files/2023-03/20...

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#13

Post by gnu8 »

DennisP wrote: post #7
HideousKojima wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. Whoah now, don't talk about my dad like that! In all seriousness though, my dad said that all the places he worked at over the years generally accepted over 99% of the claims they received. My dad did develop a visceral hatred for chiropractors over the course of his career though.

I have my suspicions but I'm still gonna ask the reason for the chiropractor hate.

Some Chiropractors and their patients are under the impression that actual diseases and injuries can be cured by performing the manual adjustments of the body, which leads to people dying of untreated cancer, or orthopedic injuries being aggravated instead of treated properly. Not to say that there aren’t good Chiropractors who recognize their limits, but they all tend to get painted with the same brush.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#14

Post by fsloth »

pstuart wrote: post #6
brigadier132 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was before doctors became incurably greedy Doctors are not the reason healthcare is expensive.

Well, the AMA does constrain the number of doctors in the US so that supply and demand part is on them.

Quite many countries limit the supply of doctors with less expensive health schemes.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#15

Post by twoodfin »

brigadier132 wrote: post #5
tiahura wrote: post #3

He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. This was before doctors became incurably greedy - so a bit early for first party health insurance.

> This was before doctors became incurably greedy Doctors are not the reason healthcare is expensive.

Any chance the US has of achieving the cost savings of other industrialized nations depends crucially on doctors making a lot less.

https://www.beckersasc.com/benchmarking/how-physician-pay-in...

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#16

Post by LanceH »

DennisP wrote: post #7
HideousKojima wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. Whoah now, don't talk about my dad like that! In all seriousness though, my dad said that all the places he worked at over the years generally accepted over 99% of the claims they received. My dad did develop a visceral hatred for chiropractors over the course of his career though.

I have my suspicions but I'm still gonna ask the reason for the chiropractor hate.

In a discussion around worker's comp claims it would be about the chiropractor's who make all their money from worker's comp claims and accident settlements. Every person who walks in that door will need unending treatment at the chiropractor. They walk hand in hand with the ambulance chasing lawyers.

For some people this is their only experience with a lawyer and chiropractor might be when someone walks in, "slips" in their store, and they get sued. The chiropractor is one method the lawyer uses to run up the total. It's always a back pain that can never be fully diagnosed or treated.

Over the years, the chiropractic field as a whole has backed off from curing everything to being split between something in the neighborhood of a massage including joint mobility (which is fine), and the fraud.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#17

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tiahura wrote: post #12
brigadier132 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was before doctors became incurably greedy Doctors are not the reason healthcare is expensive.

From the AMA: https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/ama-assn.org/files/2023-03/20...

That doesn't prove your point.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#18

Post by barbariangrunge »

HideousKojima wrote: post #4
tiahura wrote: post #3

He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. This was before doctors became incurably greedy - so a bit early for first party health insurance.

>He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. Whoah now, don't talk about my dad like that! In all seriousness though, my dad said that all the places he worked at over the years generally accepted over 99% of the claims they received. My dad did develop a visceral hatred for chiropractors over the course of his career though.

Workman’s comp in Canada typically takes over seven years to process and never actually compensated you, it’s always a fraction of what you’d need to even make up for lost income

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#19

Post by profile53 »

twoodfin wrote: post #15
brigadier132 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was before doctors became incurably greedy Doctors are not the reason healthcare is expensive.

Any chance the US has of achieving the cost savings of other industrialized nations depends crucially on doctors making a lot less. https://www.beckersasc.com/benchmarking/how-physician-pay-in...

IIRC about 40 percent of all medical expenses are administrative costs and about 20 percent is drug costs. Improving those could drop healthcare costs by nearly half, without lowering healthcare salaries.

To lower medical salaries, we need to address (a) the AMA acting as a cartel, (b) residency slots being paid for by Medicare and being limited, and (c) crippling student debt problems. As an example, nurse practitioner salaries have dropped as supply has increased.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#20

Post by keiferski »

I somewhat dislike the line of Kafka commentary that focuses on The Trial and The Castle and then associates their bureaucratic themes with his own life experience working various office jobs.

One, because his writing is about much more than this theme (in which kafkesque is too frequently confused/mixed with Orwellian) but more because it pushes away his short stories and aphorisms, which I think are much, much better than his longer works – and more mystical and mysterious in nature. I'd take A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, or some of the aphorisms from the Zürau book over his more famous works any day.

It's unfortunate that writers tend to be known for a single "brand" which causes off-brand works to be pushed to the side.

This is all a long way of saying that if you associate Kafka entirely with insurance administrators and oppressive bureaucracies and don't find this compelling, check out his shorter works.

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