Send Us Your Health Insurance Horror Stories
We want to hear from you (and we'll keep you anonymous).
We all have a story—or lots of stories—about health insurance.
My personal insurance journey might feel laughable if the state of American health insurance wasn’t so grim: Since the launch of Discourse Blog less than five years ago, I’ve blogged about my family’s headaches with health insurance, and I’ve also turned to our dear readers for advice regarding my own circle of insurance hell. Alas, the series continues, and I return with another story to share.
After being on state health insurance for the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve found myself recently unemployed (again). But I’m trying be proactive about it: a few weeks ago I saw a specialist about my trouble sleeping, and this week I finally heard from the provider about ordering me a sleep test. Of course, their first question was whether I’d gotten new coverage since my insurance expired. Since my husband has state health insurance too, we thought adding me to his plan would be the most straightforward option. That was, until we tried to settle up and learned that the health insurance alone would cost us nearly $500 per month.
I know my COBRA information is somewhere in the mail, waiting to ridicule me for opening it. Which brings me back to Healthcare dot gov. More than two years after closing the door on my years-long stint with the Health Insurance Marketplace, I’m once again kneeling at its hearth, begging for a “cheap” monthly premium that might cost me $75 for a specialist appointment — but at least I’ll be covered (after hitting my $9,000 deductible) in the event of an emergency. And since my loss of health insurance doesn’t make me eligible for Marketplace coverage for the 20 days before my new plan kicks in, my sleep diagnosis will have to wait.
I’m hardly the only person going through this. If you’ve been following our coverage of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, you’ll know this is already the second piece on the insurance status of Discourse Blog writers published in the last week. My point being, this week’s story on the failings of the American health insurance system and the violence that it’s wrought isn’t about me, or Katherine, or even the accused assassin Luigi Mangione. The poison of this system has touched anyone who has ever encountered the American health insurance apparatus, leaving victims and their survivors in its wake.
We all have some frustrating, dehumanizing, or fatal experience with the health insurance industry, regardless of how this past week’s events have spurned us to feel. In an attempt at catharsis, I want to hear about your health insurance anecdotes and memories that have come to your mind in days since Thompson’s murder.
Email me at sam@discourseblog.com with your accounts and notable experiences with health insurance, whether it be obtaining it, understanding and exercising your coverage, fighting a coverage denial, or anything in between. Next week, if we get enough submissions, we’ll put some of your responses together in a blog. We’ll keep your story anonymous, and won’t share any identifying details if you don’t want us to.
As the reporting on Thompson’s death continues, I hope that this ensuing blog provides our readers with some sort of communion, because I know we’re not alone, and neither are you.
I've worked in healthcare for more than 15 years, most of them in hospital. I can't count the number of patients who are admitted with complications directly related to running out of meds due to lack of affordability.
I'm sorry for what you're dealing with, and I hope it works out.