Ask before opening fire


Have you ever had a health insurance claim denied? Before you run out and shoot an insurance executive, use the Claim File Helper to uncover the paper trail that led to the decision.

ProPublica’s Claim File Helper lets you customize a letter requesting the notes and documents your insurer used when deciding to deny you coverage. Get your claim file before submitting an appeal.

After you’ve followed the chain of decisions, then you can consider terminating some rich a-hole. It’s the polite thing to do.

Comments

  1. charley says

    Maybe you already know that terminating the rich asshole is the right thing to do, but you lack the motivation to follow through. If that’s the case then the frustration of trying to get info from your insurance company using this method will light the required fire to get it done.

  2. jack lecou says

    If that’s the case then the frustration of trying to get info from your insurance company using this method will light the required fire to get it done.

    Or if you do get the info, you can just look over all the very likely outrageous reasons for the denial and see how that makes you feel. Like, “ran it past the in-house AI”.

    It’s win-win, really.

  3. jack lecou says

    If that’s the case then the frustration of trying to get info from your insurance company using this method will light the required fire to get it done.

    Or if you do get the info, you can just look over all the very likely outrageous reasons for the denial and see how that makes you feel. Like, “ran it past the in-house AI”.

    It’s win-win, really.

  4. says

    Dear PZ, that is a very good idea. Yes, we shouldn’t ‘shoot first and ask questions later’. However, if we had a decent (non-murderous, non-bankrupting, non-corrupt) health care system, we wouldn’t have to jump through all these hoops while in bad condition. Martha Raddatz seems to want to enrich the corrupt system, while Ro Khanna wants people to survive.
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/medicare-for-all-cost
    ABC Anchor Rebuked for Claiming Popular, Cost-Saving Medicare for All Won’t Happen

  5. says

    While PZ cast a helpful light on the process for us to use, overall I still say: Welcome to the New Dark Ages (I hope PZ doesn’t ban me for continuing to point that out.)

  6. silvrhalide says

  7. indianajones says

    And how long till someone makes a better one and monetises it? How long before not having one of these becomes the reason fr being denied health insurance?

    At every step of the way there is yet another barrier. Out of network provider, not covered for this or that or the othe conditionr, is this medicine covered or not. blah blah blah. This is not a good thing for Pro Publica to have innovated even for free.

  8. numerobis says

    indianajones: what is bad about ProPublica helping people navigate the utterly broken system as it exists?

  9. John Morales says

    numerobis, indianajones just said what: it’s monetisable in principle, and what is monetisable becomes grist for the capitalism mill.

    (Was it really that subtle?)

  10. indianajones says

    @10 numerobis. If there is a bag of poop on fire at your front door every time you get sick then the answer, however welcome and temporarily free it might be in the moment, is not a more efficient fire extinguisher. Or self cleaning slippers or whatever.. The answer is destroying the bastards who put a flaming pile of poop at my front door every time I get sick.

  11. StevoR says

    Breaking news :

    New York prosecutors have filed murder and other charges against Luigi Nicholas Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, according to an online court docket. The action brought an end to a tense five-day manhunt for the suspected killer.

    Mr Mangione remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. Police arrested him on Monday after he was spotted in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s by a customer who thought he looked like the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The 26-year-old was in possession of a gun, silencer, fake IDs, and a handwritten document suggesting he had “ill will towards corporate America”, police said.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-10/luigi-mangione-charged-with-murder-of-unitedhealthcare-ceo/104708210

    Pity.

  12. indianajones says

    “After a brief interrogation, he was given the keys to the city and a parade was held in his honour.” I hope? sigh imagine being any of the cops who arrested him, the 911 dispatcher, the employee who called the dispatcher, or the customer who asked the employee to 911 this guy. That’s a lot of links of ppl who could have stopped this. Hope every one of them sleeps terribly.

  13. John Morales says

    Kyle Rittenhouse got quite a bit of sympathy for his deed, indianajones.
    And he got away with it thereby.

    (Exactly the same sort of sentiment, just a different polarity; very laudable of you)

  14. indianajones says

    @17 Silentbob The phrase ‘I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire’ is not a call to action to immolate people. It is possible to be against the death penalty and vigilantes while being sometimes ok with deliberate non action. In this case ‘I wouldn’t spend any resources chasing your killer even if it was murder.’ is not call to action to murder or vigilantism, can be humane and humanistic, and also not psychopathic. Just curious here:, I am not qualified to diagnose psychopathy at all, let alone over the internet. Are you?

  15. birgerjohansson says

    Indianajones@ 21
    This goes all the way back to the icelandic sagas.
    In Njal’s Saga a viking named Gunnar once hit his wife.
    Later, as his house is besieged by enemies he holds them off with his bow and arrow. As the string breaks, he tells his wife to cut her hair and make a new string of it.
    She basically tells him to fuck off and die.

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