The Insensitive Bureaucracy: The Insurance Company

Cancer is a multi-billion-dollar industry.  Cancer is expensive.  I have not had any aggressive treatments yet.  But I am seeing the claims come in.  I am truly blessed that my health insurance has been paying A LOT of claims.  United Healthcare is a PPO plan I got from Gallaudet University because I am a student there.  It's a great plan up until recently.  I think what they did not plan on was having to pay so much bills for a graduate student.  Yeah, I thought I was going to get my Ph.D. and get out of there.  I did not sign up for cancer while I am working on my doctorate.  Onward.

I recently noticed they started to refuse to pay for some bills.  I called them to verbally appeal.  So far there have been five bills that I had to verbally appeal to.  Luckily after some insistence on my part, I got them to fully cover three so far.  The surgery on January 9th- the removal of the uterine polyps was something they did not want to fully pay for.  I called the insurance company to discuss this last Tuesday.  The woman I spoke with said that it was an elective procedure, not medically necessary, and that I probably got it done to prevent my chances of getting pregnant. Huh?!!! Uterine polyps PREVENT women from getting pregnant.  Elective?  I was bleeding too much. I was in pain.  I had one then I had many polyps!  Did they prefer me to suffer more? I felt the insurance agent I spoke with was very insensitive.  I told her that it was that surgery that led to discovery that I had cancer.  She wouldn't budge.  I hung up feeling angry at the system.  This system sucks.

Mike told me that it was time for him to handle the insurance calls.  He calls himself a vicious shark. I was happy to give them to him.  He called the company yesterday to see about filing a written appeal.  But the woman he spoke with was very nice and said that they realized I was right after all.  It was medically necessary and they are working on covering the surgery 100%.  I will believe it when I see that in my online account that the claims for the surgery have been all paid for.  That gives me some hope though.

I do fear though... would they think the hysterectomy when I get that is an elective procedure? That remains to be seen.