Forever Avoidance of UHC
UnitedHealthCare [1], somehow worse than United Fruit's "Nico death squads[2]"
This is a copy/paste from another message which became too long for the medium. I don't feel like revising it too much for the site, so here it is in all its woeful glory.
Having any issue arise while under the coverage period requires arbitration, and though one can deny opting in to that as well, the result is another legal fight despite CA law requiring coverage even in cases of patients stating opt-out on coerced "Binding Arbitration" clauses.
Kaiser has the same forms, and I've denied acceptance of Binding Arbitration back when I had their coverage, just as I denied the same form which signs away HIPAA rights, and that didn't matter. They did it anyway, in two states. Both Kaiser Permanente and UHC have an endless supply of lawyers, which almost no one can outlast on pure legal fees alone. Arbitration is never in the patient's favor, and the alternative "trial by jury of peers" is a grueling and time intensive process where personal information is made public, further worsening all concerns around patient privacy. Both scenarios exist as a form of dis-incentivization to stand up for ones rights.
I had hoped that over the many years since last having UHC, that they would perhaps ease their renowned specializations in both causing and "failure to mitigate" patient tragedy. I had hoped that UHC would improve its stance on alignment to legally required coverage practices, if for no other reason than in response to recent national events involving direct public feedback involving their former C-Suite person - an insight into how patient dissatisfaction works via UHC policies. It seems those hopes were misplaced.
Let's Discuss the ICU
[*] Thankful in perpetuity, my heart goes out to the EMTs at "Fire Station 13 - 530 Sansome Street, San Francisco". Only two blocks away at the time, their rapid response team transited my offline body to the ER. Once there the OR and ICU teams took over, followed by a long period of being connected to machines which managed everything which was otherwise forever offline.
After a week on the machines, the heads of NCCU (neuro), ST-ICU (shock-trauma), and E-ICU (emergency intensive care) had concurred to my mother, "It's highly unlikely that your daughter will ever wake up." UHC would have preferred those plugs to be pulled, but my mother did not, and through her endless love she fought to keep my body alive. For two years afterwards, she was still fighting UHC on my behalf to do their jobs and cover the expenses for which those premiums (and CEO salaries) had paid.
Mine was not a simple case. Eventually, from the void my conscious mind returned. I had to relearn how to walk, to speak, to hold things, to relearn what it means to be alive. It was a painfully long process, and yet here I am - able to engage in a higher state of engineering and cognitive applications than before those events.
The Will to Power
Perhaps my nearly incessant will to survive, the will to prove the neurologists wrong, or perhaps some grander purpose has been driving me forward all of these years, perhaps.
I prefer to say simply that life is too beautiful an experience to waste, one that is worth all efforts and hardship and awakenings, and that every day I still fight for this life to continue.
On the notion of $FreeCost
Philosophy aside, UHC is a corporation which causes death, suffering, and unnecessary hardship across the country, and they do this for profit. UnitedHealthCare profits by way of legal loopholes, lobbying of elected officials, even blatant denial of existing laws without loopholes - knowing that most patients cannot afford to fight them. If UHC is a healthcare "corporate plan option", often it's not even worth the $FreeCost [3][4][5][6][7] to have their coverage, as substantial attempts to use the coverage are too often auto-denied, requiring weeks or months of fighting to make them do their job and pay for services which they ruthlessly avoid accountability.
On top of that, any usefully "affordable" Deductible and Out-of-Pocket Maximum (personal and family) often become irrelevant when one cannot get the services that they need to be covered in the first place. And then what... if you want to switch to any other plan, you have to either wait until the next yearly Enrollment Period, or have a Qualifying Life Event. Feel free to look those up, it's a super fun way that the HC industry screws over the public at every moment possible.
Emotional Cost of Labor
Then there's the emotional cost. That alone is often not worth the requirements of navigating their purposefully often-circular maze, as it poisons the mind, tarnishes otherwise possibly-pleasant waking hours, and denies one their ability to have medication or necessary services in a timely manner amidst the back and forth of forms and phone calls and faxes. Months and years of despair may ensue, health deteriorates, further degrading ones ability to fight back against the system of profiteering and corruption.
