'I Don't Want to Die.' He needed mental health care. He found a ghost network

I began calling random doctors in the directory and one even told me he tried to get his name removed for three years. Anybody at the insurance company could clean up the directory once a quarter. They know the directories are inaccurate. It makes their network look bigger.

Health insurance middlemen need to be eliminated already.

They not only make the patients life worse but the doctors and hospitals as well. Dealing with insurance means small practices need a dedicated office staff to file the right paperwork and get paid for each patient visit.

People on medicaid, those who would proportionally probably need more mental healthcare, have the least amount of access (very very few therapists can financially afford to take medicaid), and the worst care (those that do are almost always new grads trying to finish the requirements of an independent license). It is one of the ways that our society deeply punishes the poor.

Many many people especially here will never have experienced this - but some who've say lost a job due to a mental health reason quickly find that as their job goes away so does their ability to access care. Then they have to decide between at minimum $400 a month (more likely $700) for food/rent or for therapy.

There is frequently nobody there to help you at the bottom. It can't happen to you until it does.

Who came up with this "network" idea? I hope they are burning in hell.

Here in Germany I can just go to any doctor/care provider. The insurance companies don't have networks I need to worry about. I have always considered that normal, and think the American system is horrible and perverse.

How can any American be proud of their country?

Then I read the bring in more revenue then "Disney, FedEx or PepsiCo".

Wait, what? Oh, right, subsidaries.

And, of course, a giant in Medicare Advantage.

That company sounds ... very bad and needs to start doing what they are supposed to be doing and stop playing games. People are looking for help and they are looking for ... well, how to squeeze out more money I suppose.

"You need psychiatric care? Sorry, we're a bit busy trying to make more money. Priorities and all."

"Someone died due to our lack of caring about any of that? Sorry to hear that. Listen, gotta go. (click)"

Sue them into the ground.

that’s how I feel about suicide hotlines and the random placement of suggesting people call them

The US really needs to get rid of the health insurance industry. Single payer would work as would standardized pricing combined with "if the doctor is licensed the insurance company must accept the bill".

Barring that, there should be SLAs regarding for one-shot online searches or one phone call lookup of in-network care providers.

For example, there could be a guarantee that the top three hits of at least 99% of such attempts each contain the phone number of a doctor's office that is accepting new patients and provides relevant care. If the insurance company falls below that bar, then it should have to refund all the premiums they collected that month (since there's no way to know which customers deferred care due to this bullshit), or be hit with some other fine that'd actually be material to their earnings.

One of the care providers that was listed was one that I had previously seen in California (the education/ alma mater, name, etc. were all the same). I did end up calling to make sure, and found that my hunch at the time of this information being horribly stale was correct.

We have a huge problem with this in New York.

People still judge me for them so I wear them openly and talk about them openly.

Of course I already know the amswer: apparently in the US the cost of that is prohibite. Over here I can go to doctoralia.com.mx and book a next day specialist for at most $100 for the first consultation. Just to get my message, and the ask him to help him refer to whoever takes my insurance, if needed.

US health system keeps beeing THE reason why I would never think to migrate to that country. No matter how pretty the American Dream sounds like.

Makes me wonder what trying to build such a reputation system would look in practice. Consumer Reports manages to hang on as a publication but not everyone consults it, and there are so many more review sites these days of varying quality, impacted by AI/outsourced copywriting.

And when you deal with an industry as dominated by a few monolithic oligopolies like health insurance or phone service- what is more bad publicity going to do to AT&T? You can’t even boycott that, especially when they lock in customers to prevent them from easily switching away.

Frankly I think we need to start breaking laws. A startup needs to offer straight up good care and fuck the web of infinite regulations which support America's for profit health failure.

Doctors can lose their licenses pretty easily so it's going to have to be a straight tech play. Offer as-good-as-possible care entirely outside of the medical profession. AIs are getting good enough that despite the obvious errors they make they are still better than the nothing-burger of care we get here.