3 ms·

Not if you call them from work.

by jb1991 2y ago

antisthenes 2y ago
Don't waste your employer's time. The morally correct choice is to just not pay.
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  Since the vast majority of Americans are on health insurance plans provided to them by their employers as part of their compensation, fighting insurance claim denials is morally equivalent to fixing payroll or expense report errors.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  That then gets sent to collections and then you get to deal with that and the ramifications for your finances.
  - aketchum 2y ago
    cant show up on your credit report though - so why does this matter?
    - recursive 2y ago
      Why can't it?
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      There's currently a proposal that medical debt not be taken into account on credit reports. [1] Personally, I just don't trust companies to not put that sort of thing in a credit report. Do we actually audit for that sort of thing? And what if they do? Assuming anyone finds out, they get to drag the punishment out over the span of years, and if they do get punished, it's probably only a fraction of the money that they earned by reducing risk. [1]https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-to-ban-medical-bills-from-credit-reports/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-propo...
    - snakeyjake 2y ago
      The impact on your credit report is irrelevant. Debt holders can (and will) sue to collect, win, and take the money by court order. Depending on the state they will take the debt, then take the amount it cost to collect the debt. Do people live in some kind of alternate reality USA where poor people who can't pay extortionate medical bills don't have their checking and savings accounts wiped out by private equity firms pretending to be healthcare providers? In my state over the past ten years 14,000 civil suits have been filed to collect medical debt. Up until last year it was legal for debt holders to place liens on debtor's houses, often their only remaining asset after being wiped out by an illness. It was only made illegal after a particularly aggressive private equity-backed firm cosplaying as a healthcare provider started relentlessly pursuing their debts, putting liens on elderly people's homes, and then aggressively pursuing judgements on the liens, and-- get this-- SNIPING THE HOME DURING THE LIEN SALES. A person cancer would not show up to court due to being a person with cancer, the private equity firm pretending to be a healthcare provider would get a default judgement, and then immediately start hammering on the courts to get dispositions and final judgements in order to add the person with cancer's house to their real estate portfolio. The state legislature made it illegal to garnish the wages of someone living below the poverty level at the same time because medical debt collectors were specifically targeting patients who could barely pay their mortgage due to not working due to being sick by garnishing what wages they were able to earn, if any, to the point that the debtor went into foreclosure (in order to facilitate the confiscation of their home). Please try, for just a few hundred milliseconds, to imagine losing your paid-off (or almost paid off) house, a scant few years before retirement age, because you got cancer.
  - antisthenes 2y ago
    So you'd rather pay tens of thousands of dollars and keep feeding the beast, rather than take a few points ding on your credit score? Your choice, but don't act like you have some kind of moral high ground here.
- jrockway 2y ago
  A lot of insurance plans are employer-paid, meaning that the money comes out of their bank account, not the insurance company's bank account. The insurance company just takes a fee to administer the claims and keep as few bills from hitting your employer's bank account. I remember Google denying coverage after a surgical procedure that they approved during the prior authorization period, and then running out the clock on my appeal. That's on them, no evil insurance company to blame, just my employer. And, the market decided... I don't work there anymore.
  - sweetjuly 2y ago
    Does Google actually administer the insurance plan? Usually the way it works is that they hire some traditional insurance company to administer is and then they just payout. Administering the plan themselves is very risky and has tons of compliance burden (because then Google would be a health insurance company). This means that the company doesn't have any direct control over claims, though they have substantial control over the general policy itself.
    - jrockway 2y ago
      No, they had an administrator. I filed the appeal through HR, though, which was the recommended process at the time. Probably not the right process in retrospect, especially because I accepted the appeal denial at face value and just paid out of my own pocket.

Not if you call them from work.

by jb1991 2y ago

Not if you call them from work.

antisthenes 2y ago

Don't waste your employer's time. The morally correct choice is to just not pay.

snakeyjake 2y ago
Since the vast majority of Americans are on health insurance plans provided to them by their employers as part of their compensation, fighting insurance claim denials is morally equivalent to fixing payroll or expense report errors.
lenerdenator 2y ago
That then gets sent to collections and then you get to deal with that and the ramifications for your finances.
- aketchum 2y ago
  cant show up on your credit report though - so why does this matter?
  - recursive 2y ago
    Why can't it?
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    There's currently a proposal that medical debt not be taken into account on credit reports. [1] Personally, I just don't trust companies to not put that sort of thing in a credit report. Do we actually audit for that sort of thing? And what if they do? Assuming anyone finds out, they get to drag the punishment out over the span of years, and if they do get punished, it's probably only a fraction of the money that they earned by reducing risk. [1]https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-to-ban-medical-bills-from-credit-reports/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-propo...
  - snakeyjake 2y ago
    The impact on your credit report is irrelevant. Debt holders can (and will) sue to collect, win, and take the money by court order. Depending on the state they will take the debt, then take the amount it cost to collect the debt. Do people live in some kind of alternate reality USA where poor people who can't pay extortionate medical bills don't have their checking and savings accounts wiped out by private equity firms pretending to be healthcare providers? In my state over the past ten years 14,000 civil suits have been filed to collect medical debt. Up until last year it was legal for debt holders to place liens on debtor's houses, often their only remaining asset after being wiped out by an illness. It was only made illegal after a particularly aggressive private equity-backed firm cosplaying as a healthcare provider started relentlessly pursuing their debts, putting liens on elderly people's homes, and then aggressively pursuing judgements on the liens, and-- get this-- SNIPING THE HOME DURING THE LIEN SALES. A person cancer would not show up to court due to being a person with cancer, the private equity firm pretending to be a healthcare provider would get a default judgement, and then immediately start hammering on the courts to get dispositions and final judgements in order to add the person with cancer's house to their real estate portfolio. The state legislature made it illegal to garnish the wages of someone living below the poverty level at the same time because medical debt collectors were specifically targeting patients who could barely pay their mortgage due to not working due to being sick by garnishing what wages they were able to earn, if any, to the point that the debtor went into foreclosure (in order to facilitate the confiscation of their home). Please try, for just a few hundred milliseconds, to imagine losing your paid-off (or almost paid off) house, a scant few years before retirement age, because you got cancer.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  So you'd rather pay tens of thousands of dollars and keep feeding the beast, rather than take a few points ding on your credit score? Your choice, but don't act like you have some kind of moral high ground here.
jrockway 2y ago
A lot of insurance plans are employer-paid, meaning that the money comes out of their bank account, not the insurance company's bank account. The insurance company just takes a fee to administer the claims and keep as few bills from hitting your employer's bank account. I remember Google denying coverage after a surgical procedure that they approved during the prior authorization period, and then running out the clock on my appeal. That's on them, no evil insurance company to blame, just my employer. And, the market decided... I don't work there anymore.
- sweetjuly 2y ago
  Does Google actually administer the insurance plan? Usually the way it works is that they hire some traditional insurance company to administer is and then they just payout. Administering the plan themselves is very risky and has tons of compliance burden (because then Google would be a health insurance company). This means that the company doesn't have any direct control over claims, though they have substantial control over the general policy itself.
  - jrockway 2y ago
    No, they had an administrator. I filed the appeal through HR, though, which was the recommended process at the time. Probably not the right process in retrospect, especially because I accepted the appeal denial at face value and just paid out of my own pocket.