• AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    You can make a perfectly serviceable peg leg with an old broom handle. Ask your insurance company for a free how-to brochure!

    • FirstCircle@lemmy.ml
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      9 days ago

      That was good enough for Ahab, and he was able to captain a commercial ship using his! Back in the good old days nobody expected insurance to cover ordinary everyday whale attacks. Those were “acts of God” just like everything else.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    9 days ago

    Denied: Can’t you just lie there like a broken Crash Test Dummy until you stop being a burden?

  • enbyecho@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    “I mean technically any medical service is not truly medically necessary, right? You could just die*”

    *Funeral services are not covered under your current plan.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    At an old job of mine, a co-worker with a congential heart condition told me that he had to provide papers to his insurance company to prove he needed heart medication. Then the company constantly pesters him to go back to the doctor to ask if his condition has improved.

    It is congential… he was born with it. He CAN’T get rid of it. Even if medical technology advanced to the point where he could have it cured, they would still spend years delaying for it to be done because they need to know if it is medically necessary.

  • POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com
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    9 days ago

    I have a friend who has a prosthetic. Sure they could live their life in a wheelchair. But this guy goes hiking, and acts like a fully capable walking person. The quality of life is huge. It really gives back their life.

      • Heikki@lemm.ee
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        9 days ago

        Won’t somebody thinking about the profiteers?

        Those guys can go to hell

      • toast@retrolemmy.com
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        9 days ago

        Unethical and counterproductive. Having a prosthetic limb would almost invariably lead to a less sedentary lifestyle, which is strongly correlated with better health. Paying for a prosthetic today has to be cheaper than paying for a heart attack or diabeties later.

        • ggppjj@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          You’re making the assumption that they’ll pay out for a heart attack or diabetes later. You just said that they were caused by the pre-existing condition of not having a prosthetic limb.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          Depends on how you measure productivity. The hope is that by the time long term care is required for things like diabetes or heart disease, the patient would be eligible for Medicare.

          That or the sedimentary lifestyle will so negatively affect the more than likely diabetic patient, that they go into renal failure and qualify for disability through social security. Effectively removing their cost onto a socialized network.

          Paying for a prosthetic is much cheaper in the long run, but not for private insurance. The vast majority of the cost of not providing a prosthetic will be absorbed by Medicare.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        It’s absolutely insane that people should be expected to either buy insurance or pay for medical care out of their own pocket. And the insurance is never enough.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I mean it’s not really. They don’t cover hearing aids or even implant surgery. “Not necessary” is what my sister gets told. Yeah, trying living deaf you asshats!

    • credo@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      They are saying it’s not “medically necessary” to have any quality of life. As long as you’re breathing, you’re A-okay in their book.

      This is what insurance in the US has come to mean.

      • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Like how they still consider dental care to be “cosmetic.” They’ll rip them out of your head free of charge, but putting new ones in? No sir… You can eat mush!

        But God forbid anyone mentions a solution that includes socialized healthcare…

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      From a purely “medical necessity” viewpoint even, having a properly-functioning prosthetic helps him keep the rest of his body healthy! (Although I suppose they’d figure on denying claims for hospital treatment when his unhealthy heart caved in!)

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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        9 days ago

        (Although I suppose they’d figure on denying claims for hospital treatment when his unhealthy heart caved in!)

        The long term goal of this type of policy is to not only reduce immediate cost, but to offload the cost of long term care onto a socialized network like social security.

        The majority of amputees are already diabetics, if you remove their ability to remain active and mobile, you substantially increase the chance of renal failure. Patients who require dialysis because of renal failure get enrolled for disability through social security.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Okay, I can spell out the “medical necessity” for you insurance companies in a way you’ll understand: mental health is important for physical health. You do things to improve mental health and you also improve physical health. So if you improve someone’s mental health now, you won’t be paying out for all of the later physical problems brought on by the stress and the knowledge that their life would be better if only some more miserly than Scrooge insurance company would let them have a fucking leg.

    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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      9 days ago

      And having a prosthetic limb is important for physical health anyways. Helps you be more active, massively increases productivity (that’s what capitalists want right?), decreases wheelchair/caregiver costs, etc.

      It’s simply an all around win.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Excellent points. The increased physical activity part would also save these idiot insurance companies money, but they would have to think beyond the next quarter.

  • boydster@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Weird how we have to pay more money every single year, and insurance somehow provides us less and less for our greater and greater spend

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Oh, but if you’re rich, we have the best healthcare system in the world! Rich people from all over the globe come to America for medical care!

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          As a non-rich American who got fucked over by The Mayo Clinic last year who were not only no help, but the patient advocate got me a full refund including for the AirBnB, I don’t blame them.

          • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 days ago

            Me neither, to be honest. I just find it funny that they brag about the US having the best healthcare in the world and then go to Canada for anything that requires a stay in a hospital, Mexico for dental, and Thailand for cosmetic surgeries.

    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      It is actually kinda incredible. I remember seeing a comic in Mad Magazine back in the 90s that satirized insurance companies by cutting ‘expensive’ healthcare and the cartoon showed an emaciated patient on IV and the insurance guy about to cut the tube with scissors.

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Noooo heckin’ killing CEOs is violent and bad

    Then this fucking headline pops up.

    They’re basically crippling people, who could have at least some kind of limb use, by denying them limbs that THEY ALREADY PAID FOR AS PART OF INSURANCE PAYMENTS.

        • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          I’ve been in corporations being driven unto the ground to extract as much money as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time. They are sociopaths, they are physically incapable of stopping. They want ALL the money and they want it NOW. They can not help themselves, and they won’t stop unless they are forced to stop by regulations, you know, in a well regulated capitalist society that puts limits on greed that costs people’s lives or happiness on an undue scale. If you don’t have those regulations… we’ll that’s how you get a forced reset of the country by people who can’t manage to swallow that much bullshit

      • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Violence is NEVER the answer! Can you imagine how horrible it would be if some degenerate insurance needer walked into a board meeting and pewpew’d all the poor shareholders? Who would make the hard decisions and demands that costs be dramatically cut and value dramatically increased? What if some horrible psychopath threw a maltov into an executive office? Or some villainous cloak and dagger type of scum rigged car bombs in some poor wealthy persons gated drive way? What would we do then! We’d live in terror of extracting value out of a system that is ment to provide service instead of just freely taking that value without consequences! Can’t you even image how bad that would be! Think of the CEOs people!

        • JonsJava@lemmy.worldM
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          9 days ago

          This comment was reported.

          I get the anger, and there’s no direct threat of violence, so I’m leaving it up.

    • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      Maybe you’re being a little unreasonable. Have you stopped to think about what the money might want? Maybe your money wants to be with the CEO without partaking in some nasty exchange of goods or services.

      • FirstCircle@lemmy.ml
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        9 days ago

        The money wants to be with the CEOs and thus have the chance to be spent on private jet rentals and lavish vacations in exotic places with influential people. It wants the chance to be spent on expensive tuition at old-money, name-brand universities and third and fourth homes in the country and on post-apocalypse survival compounds in expensive, English-speaking island nations. If you were a dollar, wouldn’t you want this too? Or would you want to spend your days going in and out of tills at Walmart and Dollar General or forked over to some prole delivery driver as a tip, a driver who’ll just spend you on fuel or fries at some greasy drive-up. Money wants to be free, free to live the good life, and to live it with the people who care about it more than anything else under the sun.

        • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          Or would you want to spend your days going in and out of tills at Walmart and Dollar General or forked over to some prole delivery driver as a tip, a driver who’ll just spend you on fuel or fries at some greasy drive-up.

          Holy shit, this part reminds me of constantly being taught to not give cash to homeless people because they’ll only spend it on alcohol or drugs.

          My mom recently saw me give $2 to a man at an intersection. It was a relatively cool day for this part of Texas at that time of year: mid-90s. She admonished me going on about how that guy was going to spend it on booze or drugs. I told her that very few people are homeless by choice and that he was just a guy trying to survive one more hot day. If my $2 bought him a bottle of water or a drug-assisted escape from reality, then it’s still making his day $2 better. Then I asked her how much drugs she thought $2 could purchase.