You know, I don’t think they consider this all too “unfortunate” at all. That part really annoys me – skip the BS words that you think connote sympathy and let’s just be honest here. You are, in fact, able to offer me coverage. You choose not to. Therefore it is not unfortunate at all, except for how it’s unfortunate that you’re an asshole. And yes, I am categorizing an entire HMO as a singular asshole. Only an asshole would think it totally makes sense to deny someone health insurance simply because THEY NEED HEALTH INSURANCE.
If you’re interested, you can refer to my prior post Depression & Anxiety for further info. The gist of my sentiments, though, is simply that I’m honestly disgusted by how the system currently operates. And before anyone tries to get up my ass about how companies need to make money too, and I’m a higher risk because of my pre-existing conditions, I have three responses:
1. Fuck off.
2. I am perfectly willing to spend more money on my coverage each month so as to balance out my potential increased cost for medical care now and later in life. I made that clear in two different places on my application.
3. Wouldn’t they presumably be making more money off of me than off of a “healthy” individual? I’m not pretending to know the logistics of it all, but I don’t see how higher risk = higher copays = higher number of office visits, tests, treatments, (grossly inflated in price) prescription medications = a bad deal for the HMO? Can someone please explain this to me?
I just…I can’t even. I don’t know what else to say. More later if I can manage to wrap my head all of this….or at least forget it all long enough to focus on recapping a couple new HIMYM episodes.
PS – It’s also worth noting that this rejection letter came from the same lovely HMO that provided me with health insurance for the majority of my life, from conception to the day before my 27th birthday. My history of mild depression and anxiety was diagnosed by them. My serious medications were prescribed by them. I take full responsibility for my weight, but I will note that this particular HMO did not exactly help me with it, even when I requested assistance.
Basically you can get any number of doctors advising that you lose weight, and suggesting you do so by reducing your intake and increasing your activity level. Which isn’t exactly a fucking revelation, but whatever. If that plan doesn’t work for you, their next idea of helping is an at-cost program where you suck down weight loss shakes as meal replacements. I think – hope – they have better options available now, but that’s the extent of what I was able to find when I needed their help.
I wish I had known then that getting medical care as a child/teen/young adult would directly result in being denied medical care as an adult. I guess they don’t like to advertise that?