A Love Letter to Government Health Insurance

I don't plan to get too much into political issues very often on here, but since it's sort of the end of an era, I thought I'd share a little story about why profit-based health insurance just plain sucks.

My fiance recently added me to his company's insurance, which (I hope, at least) will be better than the coverage I've had since coming out to Boston.

Back in the Spring of 2009, I went to the doctor with a sore throat.  Turned out to be strep throat, and not a big deal at all.  But that wasn't all that the doctor found.

He also found a lump on the front of my neck that I never would have noticed.  Who knows how long it had been there.  After determining that it was definitely abnormal, he sent me to get a needle biopsy (and as someone who has a really serious phobia of needles... Ick..).

The biopsy determined that it was, in fact, a tumor on the right lobe of my thyroid.  Luckily, it seemed to be benign, but they wouldn't know for sure until they took it out.  And since they couldn't determine how long it had been there, they didn't know if it would continue to grow if we left it there, eventually restricting my breathing.

So, into surgery I went.

The surgery went well.  My surgeon, and all of the doctors and nurses involved were brilliant and everything was fine.

Until a month or two later, when I got a letter from my insurance company saying they would not be covering the surgery.

Because it wasn't "medically necessary."

Now, I'm sure there are some spin-doctors who could argue that breathing isn't "medically necessary."  No more medically necessary than being alive, I suppose.

Luckily, my surgeon wanted to get paid.  After I called him and explained the letter I'd gotten, he had me fax the info over to him, and I never heard another word about it from the insurance company.

I'm glad to be moving up to a slightly higher tier of health insurance for a little while...

But you know what I'm really looking forward to?  Government healthcare in Denmark.