Our health is our most valuable treasure, so we trust the government to help protect it by ensuring access to quality services. When that trust is broken, we’re left feeling vulnerable, frustrated, and sometimes even helpless.
In the U.S., these emotions have reached a boiling point during the ongoing trial of Luigi Mangione, who is being accused of killing the CEO of the health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare.
Intrigued by the widespread public interest in the case, we delved into online discussions to understand why so many people are invested in it. What we found were entire threads of individuals sharing their disappointment in the system. Continue scrolling to check out the stories and our conversation with Dr. Iris Gorfinkel.
#41
I have a 6 year autistic son. It originally took about 8 months to get him into see a doctor to diagnose him officially. After that it has been a constant battle between me and the insurance company to get him the hours he needs at his ABA center after school, which they don’t want to cover as it is out of network but the closest one for at least 40 miles. Had to file paperwork for an exemption due to hardship for him to be able to go to the center, that included a phone interview where they tried to convince me it would be easy for him to be driven an hour away every day after school instead of 15 minutes. Ended up saying that it is ridiculous to think any of us including my son could handle that, it would be wasting valuable time and resources and the center we wanted has a staff of amazing people. We argued for 3 months until it was finally settled and he started going there.
He’s been there for just over 2 years and his progress is astounding, and I still have to fight with the insurance company who are looking for any reason to say he does not need to ABA therapy anymore. It’s completely insane and I f*****g hate it, but I will always endure any s*******m for my kid. My son was able to tell me exactly what he wanted to do today using full sentences, was vocal about how he wanted to do things, made idle conversation, played with his brother, is fully potty trained, just able to sleep on his own in his own bed, and is currently working hard learning to read and write. It’s extremely hard to teach him things as he learns in a very different way than most children, but once you make the connections he keeps learning until he’s perfected everything about it.
Amazing kid, I love him, but f**k the American health system, it sucks and if it were not for the ineptitude of the system he would be much further along. One of the things that really saved him mentally during the whole mess with getting him diagnosed and fighting the insurance company was raising him to be bilingual because it taught him to multitask and have critical thinking skills inherited from being able to think and speak in 2 different languages.
Edit: before he started to go to ABA therapy, he was going to a learning disabled district school for preschool and to a daycare. He had severe confidence issues and had learned to stop trying and would have constant meltdowns out of pure frustration from not being able to understand things but also from being almost nonverbal. Once he started his ABA therapy we started noticing vast improvements. So he started from a nonverbal screaming child not wanting to try new things to a kid who accepts new things and ideas all the time that is trying his best every day. Also, his learning day starts when he gets on the bus at 7:30 a.m. when he leaves for the district school until 7 p.m when he gets out of his ABA center along with 4 hours at the ABA center on Saturdays. Before anyone says that is too much, he is super happy every day, unlike the few times we have had to drive past his old daycare which makes him scared and panicked saying things like “I want to learn at the ABA center, please take me there, don’t go to the daycare”.
He’s been there for just over 2 years and his progress is astounding, and I still have to fight with the insurance company who are looking for any reason to say he does not need to ABA therapy anymore. It’s completely insane and I f*****g hate it, but I will always endure any s*******m for my kid. My son was able to tell me exactly what he wanted to do today using full sentences, was vocal about how he wanted to do things, made idle conversation, played with his brother, is fully potty trained, just able to sleep on his own in his own bed, and is currently working hard learning to read and write. It’s extremely hard to teach him things as he learns in a very different way than most children, but once you make the connections he keeps learning until he’s perfected everything about it.
Amazing kid, I love him, but f**k the American health system, it sucks and if it were not for the ineptitude of the system he would be much further along. One of the things that really saved him mentally during the whole mess with getting him diagnosed and fighting the insurance company was raising him to be bilingual because it taught him to multitask and have critical thinking skills inherited from being able to think and speak in 2 different languages.
Edit: before he started to go to ABA therapy, he was going to a learning disabled district school for preschool and to a daycare. He had severe confidence issues and had learned to stop trying and would have constant meltdowns out of pure frustration from not being able to understand things but also from being almost nonverbal. Once he started his ABA therapy we started noticing vast improvements. So he started from a nonverbal screaming child not wanting to try new things to a kid who accepts new things and ideas all the time that is trying his best every day. Also, his learning day starts when he gets on the bus at 7:30 a.m. when he leaves for the district school until 7 p.m when he gets out of his ABA center along with 4 hours at the ABA center on Saturdays. Before anyone says that is too much, he is super happy every day, unlike the few times we have had to drive past his old daycare which makes him scared and panicked saying things like “I want to learn at the ABA center, please take me there, don’t go to the daycare”.
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12points
#42
Where to even start... I suppose my worse experience (aside from the bill) was when I went in to a doctor complaining about my wrist hurting after I fell off an ATV. He said it was just sprained and to give it a couple weeks. About a month went by and nothing was done even though I still told him. Finally I ask for him to get a second opinion. He does and turns out, a bone in my wrist is broken and I need surgery to fix it. All that time him saying "Nah, you're fine." and it was f*****g broken.
TL;DR: My doctor basically said "Nah fam, it's a sprain" to my broken wrist.
TL;DR: My doctor basically said "Nah fam, it's a sprain" to my broken wrist.
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12points
#43
+3000 USD from urgent care to get ear wax out of my ear. No surgery. Just had a build up of ear wax that they took out of my ear. And yes I had insurance. When I called to ask the clinic why the facility and doctor billed me separate huge bills they dropped it down to about 1/2.
The US healthcare system is an embarrassment to humanity showing how evil and corrupt unchecked capitalism can be. The most sickening part is how many Americans are ok with it as long as they are doing ok. The justice system and politics suffer from the same stupid, arrogant, short sighted greed. Hope the younger generation does something better. Hope they vote.
The US healthcare system is an embarrassment to humanity showing how evil and corrupt unchecked capitalism can be. The most sickening part is how many Americans are ok with it as long as they are doing ok. The justice system and politics suffer from the same stupid, arrogant, short sighted greed. Hope the younger generation does something better. Hope they vote.
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12points
#44
Not having it. Had to take an emergency trip to the e.r. Where they did one x ray, gave me ibuprofen and 1 Gatorade. Now I’m over six thousand dollars in debt.
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11points
#45
My son recently got braces. I have three dental insurance plans on him... The left over was still four grand.
Let me add, same son thought he broke his tail bone last year. Spent an hour in clinic room by ourselves, get xrayed real quick, sooke to doctor for a couple minutes. Bill is six thousand.
Let me add, same son thought he broke his tail bone last year. Spent an hour in clinic room by ourselves, get xrayed real quick, sooke to doctor for a couple minutes. Bill is six thousand.
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11points
#46
Took myself to a psych ER.
Was sent to a ward.
Intake manager lady asked me various incredibly insulting questions. "Do you have friends?" "How?" She also tried to convert me to a religion, saying "it helps with mental health you know." She threw a box of icebreakers at me. There was other f****d up s**t she said, but I don't remember it. It was a while ago. I just remember I attacked her credibility and professionalism for the "do I have friends" question and she claimed it was "a legitimate line of questioning often used to determine if a person might have Borderline Personality Disorder."
She got fired for how she treated me, btw. None of these other people did, though...
Eventually I got dispatched to the corresponding unit in the ward for me.
My assigned psychiatrist again tried to convert me to a religion, with the same claim. He further completely disregarded the diagnoses my years-long psychiatrist had assigned to me "because she's a woman" and proceeded to misdiagnose me. Advocating for myself by resisting him for disregarding my Bipolar diagnosis nabbed me a "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" diagnosis. Somehow, he also was convinced I had ADD, so he put me on amphetamines. For those who don't know, people with Bipolar mix *especially* poorly with amphetamines. I spent 3 days completely unable to even keep a thought in my brain long enough to write it down before forgetting it.
In that same psych ward, a code was once called on another unit, and all our staff members minus one were dispatched there, because this was a severely understaffed hospital. This left ~20 patients with one staff member, who had just returned from a week off b/c broken ribs. That was the precise moment our unit's "local" sexual harrasser chose to try and r**e that one staff member. Same dude had shoved his a*s in my face several times, rubbed his d**k everywhere, and had been restrained & drugged so many times that one time the on-call doctor just looked down at him writhing in resistance to the straps he'd been placed in and said "I don't know what to do, I can't give him any more sedatives without potentially killing him." Anyways, the near-r**e got so bad that us patients had to restrain the guy ourselves until that one staff got the chance to get behind the desk and call a second code on our unit.
In that same psych ward, many nights, I couldn't sleep, and would stay up talking to one of the frequent night staff. He was an MMA fighter and took great pride in it. He also had a sick fascination and itch really for conflict, violence, and restraining patients. One night, he told me it was the 5 year anniversary or so of a patient killing themselves at the hospital. He proceeded to tell me in vivid detail how the patient would manage it. Being in there for suicidal ideation I was bewildered, and couldn't help but ask the guy what the f**k he thought he was doing by telling me that. He openly admitted to wanting me to attempt it, so that he could be the guy to catch me, and then went on a second long monologue in vivid detail of all the various points throughout the hospital in which he could catch me, and how, on my way up to the roof (that patient had jumped off).
Other miscellaneous nightmare stories from this unit:
* Also getting sexually assaulted by another fellow patient, this one female and twice my age. "I hear Italians have especially big c***s" she said, while groping me.
* A staff member there, supposedly a professional mental health care worker with a bachelor's in psychology, told me I "have nothing to be depressed about," "other people have it way worse," and then went on for 10 minutes telling me about how s****y his life had been growing up in a g**g-infested neighborhood "and yet [he isn't] depressed."
* Almost got HIV/AIDS due to staff carelessness and an HIV/AIDS positive roommate who was also a sociopath.
* Patient advocacy office stopped responding to my complaints because " I can't just f*****g fire half the staff in this place."
Got discharged after ~3 weeks maybe, because the doctors and mental health workers said "I don't think psych wards help you, I think you're one of those people who just get worse from being in a place like this." They weren't wrong, at least not regarding that particular psych ward. I had went in with suicidal ideation, somehow managed to come out feeling worse, and that whole ordeal cost my folks... several thousand dollars.
Was sent to a ward.
Intake manager lady asked me various incredibly insulting questions. "Do you have friends?" "How?" She also tried to convert me to a religion, saying "it helps with mental health you know." She threw a box of icebreakers at me. There was other f****d up s**t she said, but I don't remember it. It was a while ago. I just remember I attacked her credibility and professionalism for the "do I have friends" question and she claimed it was "a legitimate line of questioning often used to determine if a person might have Borderline Personality Disorder."
She got fired for how she treated me, btw. None of these other people did, though...
Eventually I got dispatched to the corresponding unit in the ward for me.
My assigned psychiatrist again tried to convert me to a religion, with the same claim. He further completely disregarded the diagnoses my years-long psychiatrist had assigned to me "because she's a woman" and proceeded to misdiagnose me. Advocating for myself by resisting him for disregarding my Bipolar diagnosis nabbed me a "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" diagnosis. Somehow, he also was convinced I had ADD, so he put me on amphetamines. For those who don't know, people with Bipolar mix *especially* poorly with amphetamines. I spent 3 days completely unable to even keep a thought in my brain long enough to write it down before forgetting it.
In that same psych ward, a code was once called on another unit, and all our staff members minus one were dispatched there, because this was a severely understaffed hospital. This left ~20 patients with one staff member, who had just returned from a week off b/c broken ribs. That was the precise moment our unit's "local" sexual harrasser chose to try and r**e that one staff member. Same dude had shoved his a*s in my face several times, rubbed his d**k everywhere, and had been restrained & drugged so many times that one time the on-call doctor just looked down at him writhing in resistance to the straps he'd been placed in and said "I don't know what to do, I can't give him any more sedatives without potentially killing him." Anyways, the near-r**e got so bad that us patients had to restrain the guy ourselves until that one staff got the chance to get behind the desk and call a second code on our unit.
In that same psych ward, many nights, I couldn't sleep, and would stay up talking to one of the frequent night staff. He was an MMA fighter and took great pride in it. He also had a sick fascination and itch really for conflict, violence, and restraining patients. One night, he told me it was the 5 year anniversary or so of a patient killing themselves at the hospital. He proceeded to tell me in vivid detail how the patient would manage it. Being in there for suicidal ideation I was bewildered, and couldn't help but ask the guy what the f**k he thought he was doing by telling me that. He openly admitted to wanting me to attempt it, so that he could be the guy to catch me, and then went on a second long monologue in vivid detail of all the various points throughout the hospital in which he could catch me, and how, on my way up to the roof (that patient had jumped off).
Other miscellaneous nightmare stories from this unit:
* Also getting sexually assaulted by another fellow patient, this one female and twice my age. "I hear Italians have especially big c***s" she said, while groping me.
* A staff member there, supposedly a professional mental health care worker with a bachelor's in psychology, told me I "have nothing to be depressed about," "other people have it way worse," and then went on for 10 minutes telling me about how s****y his life had been growing up in a g**g-infested neighborhood "and yet [he isn't] depressed."
* Almost got HIV/AIDS due to staff carelessness and an HIV/AIDS positive roommate who was also a sociopath.
* Patient advocacy office stopped responding to my complaints because " I can't just f*****g fire half the staff in this place."
Got discharged after ~3 weeks maybe, because the doctors and mental health workers said "I don't think psych wards help you, I think you're one of those people who just get worse from being in a place like this." They weren't wrong, at least not regarding that particular psych ward. I had went in with suicidal ideation, somehow managed to come out feeling worse, and that whole ordeal cost my folks... several thousand dollars.
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9points
#47
Paying so much for physical therapy. You can literally look up these exercises on the internet and do them at home.
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9points
#48
I went to a hospital because I had bronchitis and didnt have a primary care. I told them it was bronchitis (because I've had it before.) And just asked for a quick diagnosis and the antibiotics. They said they needed an x-ray, several swabs for flu, bloodwork, and 5 minutes of listening to me breathing.
I offered to give them my insurance card, they said no need and gave me the prescriptions.
2 months later I have a $5,000 bill for f*****g bronchitis and my insurance lapsed because I lost my job. I still get calls from debt collectors because they immediately sold it off, before I even got the bill.
I offered to give them my insurance card, they said no need and gave me the prescriptions.
2 months later I have a $5,000 bill for f*****g bronchitis and my insurance lapsed because I lost my job. I still get calls from debt collectors because they immediately sold it off, before I even got the bill.
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9points
#49
Before kids, I found out I was a carrier for cystic fibrosis. We went to get my husband tested so we could be appropriately worried if he was also a carrier and potentially affect our kids.
He went and got the simple blood test. Our insurance was billed over $7,000. We ended up having to pay about $1,200, I think.
I feel like I'm definitely missing something about how that test is done, but that seemed utterly insane to me and we since stopped using that hospital system.
His insurance is paid for by his company, and due to other things like that happening, the company has since taken that hospital system off of their network.
He went and got the simple blood test. Our insurance was billed over $7,000. We ended up having to pay about $1,200, I think.
I feel like I'm definitely missing something about how that test is done, but that seemed utterly insane to me and we since stopped using that hospital system.
His insurance is paid for by his company, and due to other things like that happening, the company has since taken that hospital system off of their network.
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9points
#50
I was 2. Literally dying because I could hardly breathe at 2 AM but the whole ER was held up because some Karen decided to take her kid to the ER at 2 AM because they had a sore throat. Their diagnosis was they cried too hard that night.
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8points