something pretty interesting that i found today

lamebot:

while at work and looking in detail at a patient’s insurance coverage, i noticed this:

• Medical Exclusions:

1. - riot, rebellion and illegal acts

• Services and supplies for treatment of an illness, injury or condition caused by a member’s voluntary participation in a riot, armed invasion or aggression, insurrection or rebellion or sustained by a member arising directly from an act deemed illegal by an officer or a court of law.

so i looked into it further, wondering how many insurance companies may not cover an injury if a police officer decides that what my patient may have been doing was illegal and it turns out that pretty well all private and commercial insurance companies agree; if a cop says it’s your bad, then you have to pay those medical  bills. 

so what i’m seeing here is the students that may have been actually injured at school campus riots whether they may or may not have actually been involved or all the occupy people that ‘got out of hand’ while peacefully protesting probably have HUGE medical bills. if a police report was made (which if they were handcuffed, it was), chances are, that patient is fucked. 

i work in the healthcare industry and still think it’s one of the most fucked up industries. not so much healthcare as insurance, i guess. insurance companies blow. healthcare is dependent on the specialty, etc. i choose to write off literally thousands of dollars a day because i get to know my patients, know their stories and know what’s going on with them. and so when it comes to patient statement day and i get a proof of ~500 statements i go through them one by one, look up their chart, remember their stories and choose to write stuff off from there. because our office STILL makes money from legit collection of payments based on income, etc. 

…

if a cop says you were in the wrong, your medical debt is your own burden to bear, even if that burden may have been a tactical stick to the side of the head used in a completely unnecessary way… 

Hrm. Well, This is completely fucked and I’ll bet almost nobody knows about it. 

You should know this. 

(update: as it happens my insurance doesn’t have this exclusion, but I do work for a pretty liberal institution, so I might be the exception rather than the rule. but you should check your plan!)

(Source: lamebot)