Tag: medical insurance

Oct 06 2012

Rare Event: Transwoman wins battle with insurance carrier

Ida Hammer, 34, is originally from Utah and now lives in the borough of Queens, New York City.  Raised a Mormon, Ida is a writer and an activist.  She moved to NYC four years ago and immediately began hormone treatment and living as a woman.

Among the places she publishes her writing is The Vegan Ideal.  She also has published in On the Issues magazine.  Trans Violence Is Violence against Women is from last December.  She organizes Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project.

Ida has won an enormously important battle with her insurance carrier.

Ida approached her insurance company, MVP Health Care, in July, 2011 about having her genital realignment surgery covered.  Of course, MVP declined…twice.

My insurance company denied my claim on the grounds that it was ‘cosmetic’ surgery.  (But) my doctors determined that the surgery was necessary, and the insurance company was second-guessing my doctors.

–Ida Hammer

Oct 27 2009

Common Sense Health Care; Individualism or the Commonweal

CmmnSns

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Democrats dance in the streets and declare success.  An ABC News-Washington Post poll released on October 18, 2009, found that only twenty percent of the population defines themselves Republican.  Progressive assert this result will work in the their favor if the public option is to pass.  However, the now ecstatic portion of the electorate discounts the “disconnect” discussed in the aforementioned study and also addressed in a Pew Research Center report published only a week earlier.  The overjoyed overlooked the Independents (42%), the leaner’s, Left and Right (39%), and the less than inspirational number who proclaim themselves proud Democrats (33%).   For these individuals, the topic of health care reform is a complex issue.  Trust in Congress is near nil.  People are engaged in the subject, albeit a bit overwhelmed.  Sixty-six percent (66%) say they do not understand the proposed policies.  Personal matters move most people, more so than Party politics does.  Possibly, that is the problem, or the predicament that precludes authentic medical insurance reform in America.

Jul 18 2008

Insurance Companies Ready Themselves for the Battle over Profits

The insurance industry in the United States of America is actively recruiting and hiring and training LOBBYISTS in huge numbers to ready themselves for the shit-storm that the American people and HOPEFULLY their elected Representatives are about to lay down on them in the very near future.

As we are all well aware, medical insurance and the FOR PROFIT Insurance Corporations in the U.S. are out of control.  Millions of citizens are not insured at all, most citizens that do have some sort of medical insurance are under-insured and the sky-rocketing costs of medical insurance are becoming more and more prohibitive for the average American worker.  Add to that fact that employer based medical insurance is where most Americans recieve their insurance package and then consider the rising unemployment issue in this country, and things can only go from horrible to completely unacceptable.

In an essay I submitted yesterday, US slips down development index, Citizens live shorter lives, we discussed the fact that the citizens of America are now only 42nd among countries in the world regarding life expectancy, even though we spend more money per person on medical care than any other country in the world.

At some point, it should become obvious to even the Insurance Corporations that we are simply not getting our money’s worth with that dismal track record.  Yet, they simply don’t care.  The bottom line is profit, and they are going to spend an incredible amount of their profits on Lobbyists to make sure that no matter the quality of health care U.S. citizens might or might not receive is made to be a moot point.  Their continued profits are all they care about and they are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure those profits continue to flow into their coffers.