Sick Man Shows That His Insurance Company Is Prioritizing Wealth Over His Health And Doesn't Even Hide It

The spread of the coronavirus means that the healthcare system and medical professionals are getting more attention than usual. Lots of people are pointing out the flaws in the system and Twitter user Doctorow is one of them. But this isn’t another coronavirus story.

According to Doctorow, the US has “the worst healthcare in the developed world.” He then explains why using his personal experience with health insurance and how his provider refused to cover the inexpensive medication that he needed. Scroll down to read Doctorow’s story in his own words.

Doctorow’s thread got over 3.4k likes on Twitter and more than 1.1k people retweeted it. The thread also spread to other social media channels, including Imgur where it got over 4.8k upvotes and was viewed by more than 131k users. Scroll down for Bored Panda’s interview with Doctorow about US healthcare and how it can be improved.

A lot of people agreed with the Twitter user’s opinion about how the system in the US needs to be improved. Preferably, by following the fully-functioning example set by other developed countries.

The Atlantic writes that the US has the lowest-performing healthcare system in developed countries, according to the Commonwealth Fund. The highest performing nations are the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia, even though the US spends the most money.

David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, said that this is “consistent across 20 years.” He explained that there are 3 reasons why the US can’t catch up to its allies.

First of all, there’s a lack of insurance coverage: in 2016, over 27 million Americans were uninsured. That’s because they simply can’t afford it. “The literature on insurance demonstrates that having insurance lowers mortality. It is equivalent to a public health intervention,” Blumenthal said.

He also pointed out that the US wastes a lot of money on administration. “Doctors and patients [report] wasting time on billing and insurance claims. Other countries that rely on private health insurers, like the Netherlands, minimize some of these problems by standardizing basic benefit packages, which can both reduce administrative burden for providers and ensure that patients face predictable copayments,” the Commonwealth Fund reports.

Lastly, we have underperforming primary care in the US. “We have a very disorganized, fragmented, inefficient and under-resourced primary care system,” Blumenthal explained. “Many primary-care physicians struggle to receive relevant clinical information from specialists and hospitals. We don’t invest in social services, which are important determinants of health.”

In other words, if the US improves in these 3 key areas, it can solve the problem at its source and help millions of Americans get the care they deserve.

Doctorow told us that, in his opinion, creating a Medicare for All system with a single payer and eliminating the private insurance industry is the best way that the US can catch up to other developed countries.

“The poorest and richest Americans should rely on the same healthcare system so that anything that makes things better for influential, connected wealthy people makes things better for the nation,” he said.

According to Doctorow, the main thing holding the US healthcare system back is “unlimited political spending by a concentrated, highly profitable insurance industry.”

Doctorow said that this is due to a combination of “Citizens United and lax campaign finance laws; financial secrecy laws that allow for dark money campaigns; antitrust malpractice that has led to massive concentration in the health (and every other) industry; the rise of private equity and its financially destructive MO, which has transformed healthcare by consolidating hospitals, doctor's groups, labs, etc under PE structures that rely on debt-loading and other extractive practices.”

But what should Americans who can’t afford to be insured do? Doctorow had this to say: “Mobilize. Find a candidate that supports Medicare for All and donate, volunteer, and vote for them. This is a year in which M4A's significance and profile are on a rise and rise with no peak in sight. It's our moment.”

“The American healthcare scandal is a microcosm for dozens of similar circumstances, in which concentrated industries collect monopoly rents that they can use to influence politicians,” he said. “The policies that these politicians create—and the regulators who enforce them—are designed to make the donor class wealthier, not to improve the lives of the American people.”

He continued: “Whether it's cable and wireless, energy, finance, movies, music, online services, pharma, eyewear, or even pro wrestling, industries have dwindled to a handful of companies that use anticompetitive tactics to crush or buy competitors, reducing choice, competition, and the hope of a pluralistic future.”