The Health Insurance Trap

[Blue State Blues]

The story of a man who HAD health insurance, but had to go through a run-around to get the cancer treatment he needed from an out-of-network hospital.

At the center of the health care debate is a belief among many Americans that our private health insurance system isn't working. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that the government shouldn't intervene in health insurance. Fast forward to today, after a cancer diagnosis and four months of chemotherapy, and I have a very different opinion on private health care. This is my story.

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As I sit here a year later and write this I can't help but think I am one of the lucky ones. I survived cancer, which 30 years ago would have been a death sentence. I also had health insurance, which means I am better off than 40 million Americans. However, I was astounded at how little health insurance actually covers when you get sick. And one final addendum to this story: As of June 30, 2009, Oxford added Memorial Sloan Kettering to their network, although they refuse to make it retroactive for my treatment nine months earlier. I am still fighting with both the insurance company and the hospital, and may never find a way out of the health insurance trap.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-sigalow/the-health-insurance-trap_b_310147.html

[Skittles]

1. hmmmm

don't know whether to be grateful he is telling his story or disgusted that he has to experience it himself to empathize with what millions of others have discovered