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1. Embed this notice
   B Haas (belehaa@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 01-Sep-2024 01:27:50 JST B Haas

   • Paul Cantrell
   • Michael Dekker

   @dekk @inthehands By this same logic, rebates are just loans you make to a corporation that hopes they won't have to pay you back

   Yep. Story checks out

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 01:58:44 JST Paul Cantrell

     Oh joy! Went to get my COVID vax update this morning (timing makes sense for me: students pouring back with cases at peak, yuck), and…

     …the pharmacist tells me HealthPartners insurance is refusing the updated vaccine.

     SPOILER: The end of this thread is that I got the shot, but private health insurance should be burned to the ground.

     1/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:00:52 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Called HealthPartners. Time to human: ~10 min. To their credit, the human was super nice. Turns out HealthPartners did some massive internal corporate faceplant, and the vaccine wasn’t entered into their computer systems properly. It’s wrongly refusing across the board.

     Problem will be fixed “by Saturday.” My appointment is now.

     2/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:07:32 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     They have a solution:

     - Pay for the shot out of pocket now (which is $200).
     - Save the receipt.
     - Bring the receipt back to the pharmacy after Saturday (physically, this can’t happen over the phone, not that CVS is reachable over the phone anyway), and ask them to refund and rebill, and then it should go through.
     - If that doesn’t work, upload receipt to HealthPartners and ask for reimbursement by going to their web site > Log in > My plan > Overview > Find a Form❮post truncated for length❯

     3/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:11:48 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Consider:

     - I can afford to pop $200 out of pocket and get reimbursed later. Not everyone can.
     - I can afford 15 minutes wasted on the phone. Not everyone can.
     - I can get back to the pharmacy easily for the billing retry. Not everyone can.
     - I’m sufficiently fluent, pushy, and culturally privileged to navigate this whole stupid situation. Not everyone is.

     Each of those “not everyone”s is somebody who doesn’t get vaccinated — at who knows what cost to themselves and to us all.

     4/

     Blaise Pabón - controlpl4n3 repeated this.
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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:14:29 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     THE BIG QUESTION: What purpose does this serve?

     It wasted a lot of people’s time: mine, the pharmacist’s, the support person at HealthPartner’s, presumably a bunch of people deep inside the pipeline of this whole stupid machine.

     Did it improve care? No. Did it improve outcomes? No. Did help allocate some resource more efficiently or more effectively? No.

     5/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:20:02 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     What purpose does this serve?

     Well, we’ve set up a hideous Nash Equilibrium where health providers, insurers, pharma corps, and governments all stand to save money by relentlessly trying to gouge one of the others into paying for everything.

     We are simultaneously trying to (1) externalize the cost of health care from individuals (lest the market price individual human lives (not that it doesn’t, but we try)) while (2) using the market to make things efficient…somehow. Outcome: nonsense.

     6/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:23:08 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     I don’t love the idea of nationalizing all health care — I think it’s good to have many •strictly nonprofit• hospitals, docs, etc with some degree of autonomy — but I am ready to see private insurance eliminated completely. I don’t see that it adds any value whatsoever.

     7/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:26:03 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     That said, stories like this one from @daniel remind us of the danger of one central system making a bad decision for everyone at once:
     https://social.treehouse.systems/@daniel/113040800671835057

     In the US, I do at least have the privilege of getting 2 boosters a year, simply because I think it’s a good idea. I don’t want to pretend utopia exists somewhere else.

     8/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:27:09 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     TL;DR:

     - Paul is grumpity.

     - US folks, if your insurance hasn’t caught up with the updated COVID shot, pay out of pocket if you can and fight for a reimbursement. And maybe write to your electeds (I am).

     /end

   • Embed this notice
     Dewey (deweyoxberger@techhub.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:38:51 JST Dewey

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands I just went to my CVS appointment and they also told me that they don't contract with my insurance. I walked out with no shot, hoping to schedule with Walgreens, but they're two weeks out already. I really wanted that vax today

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:38:51 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Dewey

     @DeweyOxberger
     Go back, see if you can pay out of pocket…if you can afford to ride the 200 on your CC bill for a few weeks…

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:40:07 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Berkubernetus

     @fuzzychef @daniel
     Yes to 1, no to 2.

   • Embed this notice
     Berkubernetus (fuzzychef@m6n.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:40:09 JST Berkubernetus

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands @daniel How are you getting 2 boosters a year? Are you paying cash for one of them?

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:45:07 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Berkubernetus

     @fuzzychef @daniel
     Sorry! Yes getting two boosters a year, no not paying out of pocket. (Insurer never seems to object.)

   • Embed this notice
     Berkubernetus (fuzzychef@m6n.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:45:08 JST Berkubernetus

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands @daniel Sorry, I don't quite understand your answer.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:47:43 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Pat Madigan
     • Dewey

     @patmadigan @DeweyOxberger
     I now refuse to get early shots from Walgreens for exactly this reason.

   • Embed this notice
     Pat Madigan (patmadigan@c.im)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 02:47:44 JST Pat Madigan

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Dewey

     @DeweyOxberger @inthehands Also, with #Walgreens I found that their online scheduling didn’t match the reality of #vaccine availability in each store.

     I called three locations and spoke with three frazzled employees who provided different ETA’s for the vaccine at their store.

     I went with the store that thought they’d get it the soonest (1-2 weeks), but they advised that I call on the scheduled day to make sure that it’s really there.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 03:11:07 JST Paul Cantrell

     • Michael Dekker

     @dekk
     My mom has a saying: “When everyone’s watching the baby, no one is watching the baby.”
     Should the CDC have figured all of this out weeks or months ago? Should insurers have internal processes set up to handle this expeditiously? Should this all just be on a regular schedule, like flu? Yes to all the above.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 03:53:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands In #Ireland, we can’t get a #COVID vaccine for love or money.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:39:24 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan

     @aral why, in this great year of 2024…

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:41:02 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Probably depressed

     @jrod3737
     Judging by the replies, they’re not the only one either.

   • Embed this notice
     Probably depressed (jrod3737@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:41:03 JST Probably depressed

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands
     I’ve worked at HealthPartners. This is the least surprising thing I’ve heard about HealthPartners. In fact, this just sounds like a random Tuesday in April.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:43:20 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands We have ostriches authoring public policy.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:45:04 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan

     @aral
     Whereas here in the US our public policy is apparently written by rabid wolverines

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:48:58 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Mela Eckenfels

     @Mela
     I suspect the idea that they are capable of making any such sort of informed decision about outcomes is giving them far too much credit.

     They have a system. This happened. They’re just surprised as anyone. They don’t understand it either.

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     Mela Eckenfels (mela@zusammenkunft.net)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 04:49:00 JST Mela Eckenfels

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands

     They really rather want to pay for the treatment and aftercare if it's going south-y?

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 05:23:37 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • JerseyBlue

     @dnelson
     My understanding from people who actually understand the horrid interior of these systems is that actual Medicare as it exists has all sorts of logistical barriers that make it so it can’t just scale up to national scale without a lot of re-plumbing. But if you’re speaking vaguely, in principle, then yes.

   • Embed this notice
     JerseyBlue (dnelson@masto.ai)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 05:23:38 JST JerseyBlue

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands Sounds a lot like Medicare.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 05:23:47 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Tarmo Amer

     @tarmoamer
     I’ll believe that when I see it.

   • Embed this notice
     Tarmo Amer (tarmoamer@est.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 05:23:49 JST Tarmo Amer

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands You don’t have to nationalise ALL of it. Just enough to make sure no one goes untended. Private alternatives are quite alright.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 06:44:36 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Danny Boling ☮️

     @IAmDannyBoling
     [nods] I mean, people who share our view on this are I think far too careless about how easy or obvious the process would be. Pulling the knife out of the wound is dangerous, tricky business. But it is a knife, and it is a wound.

   • Embed this notice
     Danny Boling ☮️ (iamdannyboling@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 29-Aug-2024 06:44:37 JST Danny Boling ☮️

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands

     "I am ready to see private insurance eliminated completely. I don’t see that it adds any value whatsoever."

     YES!!! 👍

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Sep-2024 00:56:06 JST Paul Cantrell

     • Michael Dekker

     @dekk
     Well said. A quote that lives in my head now: Patients are the free labor of the health care system.

     And in this case, apparently I’m the bank too.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Sep-2024 01:29:04 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Michael Dekker

     @belehaa @dekk
     If there aren’t actuaries out there calculating repayment probabilities of each rebate based on amount, mechanism, prominence, market sector, etc. then I’m a monkey’s uncle