She literally called me at the time of the appointment to tell me she can’t see me. She was so apologetic, but was like “I absolutely can treat you, but I’m not allowed by your insurance”. Fuck this country.
Update: I went to urgent care. Before leaving home, I called to be sure they would accept my insurance (Aetna). They said yes… After arriving for my appointment, they told me they do not accept my insurance. I will simply leave without paying.
Final Update: I can understand that that differences in physical biology demand different attention. That’s not what I’m complaining about. It’s the way it’s set up. I was told that at my appointment. Why not just refer me to a specialist? The website could’ve even just referred me to urgent care (yes, my insurance requires a primary care physician’s referral for urgent care, according to the urgent care facility). But, no, their goal is to obfuscate and irritate until the patient gives you and pays out-of-pocket.
I was able to receive care at a cost I could not afford. I won’t discuss what I had to do to “find” the money to pay for care and prescriptions. That being said, the condition I was diagnosed with was more serious than a simple infection, and I’m glad that I saw a doctor. I need further treatment and just hope I can get insurance to cover any of it.
If you’re an American reading this, please consider ways to get involved in organizing in support of Medicare For All in your community. Here is one resource I have found. We don’t need to live like this. We deserve better. Stay safe and healthy, friends.
Sounds like discrimination based on sex. A clear violation of the Civil Rights act of 1964.
Car insurance companies are literally allowed to discriminate by sex and will openly tell you that they do so, why would health insurance be different?
Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits different treatment of insured persons on the basis of their sex in connection with pension funds. This was a supreme court ruling, so kind of linked but not quite.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/253100
Interestingly, in UK and EU it became illegal to discriminate by sex for car insurance from about 2012, without very careful use of data - which doesn’t happen. It is allowed to be linked on things like jobs though.
newsflash: US never cared about civil rights and despite it being “law” it gets regularly ignored on an institutional scale
Yes, this is the problem.
That’s what I was thinking. Sounds illegal.
Nothings illegal if you control the government!
It might be, but some health related coverage is legitimately divided along sex lines. I don’t know what the answer is, but it might not be so simple.
Stupid either way though.
Different genitals. But all genders have bladders so why the hell wouldn’t the insurance just cover it for everyone
but females dont need to fart and males dont need to urinate!11!
I cannot stress enough how true this is.
a few people have mentioned it’s because of anatomy and how it makes male UTIs more complicated + require more complex care. it’s not a case of insurance not covering it, op just needs to go somewhere else
I will look into that. Thank you for brining it to my attention ❤️
If you think that’s discrimination, don’t look at the marketing industry.
Discrimination based on biological factors is literally what insurance companies do.
So a few things. This is a CVS minute-clinic visit, not a visit to a general provider. The minute clinics have contracts with insurance companies that look a bit different in terms of what and who they are permitted by the insurance companies to treat. There are some really odd variations in these contracts by insurance companies for reasons that are not always grounded in science.
This, as you’ve noted, is an unfortunate reality of a for-profit health care system that is dictated by private companies, insurance companies, and mind-bogglingly complex contracts that sit between providers and patients. The most annoying part IMO is that insurance companies provide zero transparency into these contracts and the justification behind decisions. It’s all “business decisions” at the end of the day, not decisions that are medically sound and in the best interest of the patient.
And for those wondering why OP maybe just didn’t go to a “regular doctor” - the U.S. has a horrible shortage of general practitioners (primary care) physicians. This shortage is worse in some areas than others. And even if you’re lucky to live in an area that has general practitioners, the waiting list to get into their practices might be long. This leaves many people relying on a “doc in the box” aka CVS Minute Clinic or some similar outfit. These doc in the box clinics often only have a nurse or nurse practitioner on site, with a supervising physician off side. They are for-profit entities and they work with the insurance companies to design their contracts to maximize profit.
If you ever find yourself in OP’s physician, one easy way to get around this is to indicate that the visit is for something more general, like abdominal pain or unexplained fever. While the staff still might refer you off to another provider, it might be a good way to at least “get in” with someone.
Another option is to visit a local urgent care clinic if one is available and covered by insurance. These are often staffed by actual physicians so they can treat a wider range of conditions. Many often even have testing facilities right on site for a number of issues.
Finally, another option is to call your insurance company and see if they have an over-the-phone nurse consultant available. They can usually help direct you to the right location for treatment based on your symptoms and insurance coverage.
But yes, OP, I agree with you that we need something better. Medicaid and Medicare have slowly been expanding and my hope is that they will eventually expand enough to cover all Americans. it has been proven that they can still operate without completely decimating the insurance industry (see Medicare and Medicaid managed care). While I don’t agree with for-profit health insurance, the reality is that they are a lobbying force that has to be worked with if we are going to get everyone universal coverage.
Source: Health policy professional by trade, extensive experience within the health care industry
How is the us a real place wtf?
And it’s not like we learn this stuff in school. It’s not written out anywhere. We have to rely on word of mouth, people with experience, or people like the commenter above you who are familiar with the ins and outs.
The bottom line is that it is complicated on purpose and designed to wear you out so you don’t get coverage for your most basic human needs - like peeing without your urethra being on fire.
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No sorry that is wrong. The need for profit and growth in profit absolutely pushes health insurance organizations to limit their costs, and denying service is routine, planned and not some mysterious accident.
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undefined> The real kicker is you’re wrong. It’s not designed that way. That’s just a happy accident of capitalism run amok. Almost no one involved in the system is an intentionally bad actor. Almost everyone wants to do the right, good thing.
That statement.,
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You should really look into the history of modern US healthcare. Johnson nearly passed a public health system. They consciously decided to go with this instead. This is absolutely by design. The people in charge simply fire anyone not making a profit until they find someone willing to do anything to create a profit, legal or not. (See Wells Fargo for this too, it’s an old playbook at this point.) They play naive but they are totally aware of what is done to create those profits.
Also we recently found this with the Opiate stuff too and that entire family exchanging messages clearly indicating they knew the illegal activities and lies being told for profit. They just played dumb publicly.
Back in my day we always pee’d with our urethra on fire after we walked to school and back uphill both ways - and we liked it!
Back in my day we peed on each other around the fire and instead of school a man would come around the house and hit us over the head with an encyclopaedia for 6 hours in the hope we’d learn by osmosis, and we were happy to have that.
Wat
Just ask yourself, could a rich person make money off of this? And it all falls into place. Over the last several decades the people of the United States have been increasingly treated like a mined resource.
First world country which treats its citizens as third world, that’s what we live in. Follow the money, because if something isn’t making money for someone, then we don’t get it.
A lot, and I do mean it, of third-world countries have better access to medical care and universal healthcare than the US.
This is great. Thank you for providing such great info to lemmy. A lot of people in the US suffer from a lack of information, and this more than certainly helps.
That’s more than mildly infuriating…
My friend, you need to do two things –
One, get treated. It seems you’ve visited urgent care. They are “real” doctors and, assuming the hospital or clinic the urgent care is associated with is well-staffed and stocked, should be able to get your sorted today. Be sure to get any prescriptions you need filled on-site, if possible, before you leave.
Two, review your healthcare plan. While the Affordable Care Act mandated certain minimum coverages several things happened since that allow people to purchase plans that do not conform to the ACA mandates. On those so-called “catastrophic” plans, insurers can deny or decline to cover all sorts of things. Patients often simply shop by monthly premium cost and don’t check coverages. Make sure your health plan is ACA-compliant, and, if not, look into a way to get covered by a compliant plan.
If it IS ACA-compliant, then treating a UTI, even in a male, is covered. You may be selecting providers that are not in-network, or do not have the proper staffing to treat this fairly rare condition, though. It may be worth a visit to your primary care provider if you can’t get something like CVS or another “Doc in a Box” to treat it.
You are presuming that it is a UTI and and coding it wrong for insurance purposes. Do a visit for something more generalized that is covered like abdominal pain and doctor will know how to code it properly for insurance.
Are you sure this isn’t just a CVS thing? It says the same thing for me and I know my insurance covers UTIs for everyone. Maybe try an urgent care?
This is correct… there is 2 things to remember here
- CVS only has nurse practitioners, nurses, or pharmacists that are doing the screening, and must refer for certain cases
- There are 2 types of UTIs….
- complicated and uncomplicated
- Men ALWAYS have a complicated uti due to the anatomy of where the uti is located
- women can have either, these NPs are only allowed to treat UNCOMPLICATED UTIS and must refer all complicated cases to a physician.
FYI it has nothing to do with insurance
There is a cause and there is a solution for our disgusting system.
Conservatives (including neo-liberals) serve corporations, not citizens. If we can marginalize conservatives (including neo-liberals), then we can have nice things like the other 31 developed nations on earth.
This cannot improve while conservatives (including neo-liberals) have power in our nation’s government. Period.
The entirely of modern America could be summarized with “Mildly Infiruating”, tbh.
It is utterly baffling to me how the US has not figured out nationalized healthcare. Literally every other developped nation in the western hemisphere has at this point.
Its crazy that a politician could come out and say “my number one priority is to ensure that every American has access to healthcare, paid for by the state”, and would instantly be villified by like half the country.
A handful of bastards at the top are making unfathomable amounts of wealth at the cost of the lives and future of the country. A majority of the country is in support of nationalizing health care. I’ve even met conservatives who agree. It’s these sick fucking parasites who won’t allow us to have it.
All the fuckers writing the laws have socialized healthcare. It’s the untouchables who don’t.
The covid national emergency is declared over. Potentially up to 15 million people will lose Medicaid expansion. Florida already kicked off 600,000 people. An 87 year old who had a daily care taker lost access even though they were qualified after the cut. A 7 year old boy will now die because they took access to his leukemia treatment. About half the people still qualify but they are making everyone reapply.
My dad some how affords stupidly expensive healthcare. Premiums are $4,000 a month. ER copay is $1000. ER deductible is $18,400 per family. My mom is now on a medication that costs $1400 a day. With other meds her medication is $15,800 a month for the rest of her life (she is 59). With insurance it goes down to $28 She has had $100,000 in medical bills. She has some super rare condition. Our insurance said one of the out of network doctors was covered. My mom verified multiple times. Now they don’t want to cover that doctor so we are stuck with a $25,000 medical bill. My mom says she will put it on the lowest amount a month for the rest of her life.
In other words if my dad couldn’t afford this insurance she probably would be dead now or in a few months.
Crazy is that we are all Canadian and if we lived there we could go on OHIP plus extra insurance for a few hundred bucks a month. For those who say Canadian’s have wait times, so do we. The difference is you will be seen and will not go medically bankrupt or denied care because you are too poor.
The excuse is that Canadians come to America for better doctors with lower wait times. They do. But when you realize they come to the States they don’t have long term insurance. Meaning they pay out of pocket. So it’s wealthy Canadians that can afford insanely high prices.
All my family in Canada says my father is pissing away money. He is.
God Bless American Healthcare! /s
TLDR Doug Ford can sod off and go to hell.
Because the healthcare industry makes money. A shitload of money. Why would they “fix” that? The problem is the fact that it is an industry.
It’s… complicated. The US is more like the EU. Every state is practically its own country. Every state has its own health department. State wealth varies greatly and each state has their own opinion on what level of trust should be placed on federal government. The one example we have of federal health care (VA for military veterans) is shit.
Maybe things will change based on the current trajectory… corporate buy outs have been rampant and experienced doctors are retiring to cash in before they can’t afford to run their own practice. It takes weeks to get appointments and most corporate doctors just want to stick to the treatment script they are provided. In other words, corporations are doing exactly what most people fear the feds would do.
I’m living in Turkey. All health care is free.
but if you live in turkey you get hate for being gay
You get that in the US too, so what’s the difference?
true that
Unless you are unemployed. Then you have to pay the unemployed tax (GSS) whether you use the healthcare services or not.
That sounds so fucking stupid
You’re unemployed so pay us money you can’t recoup until we make you homeless
That sounds expensive. So when you don’t have an income source they charge you a tax for it?
It makes sense if you think about it (assuming my thoughts are correct, I’m in the US). If you’re employed, you are contributing through your taxes. Just because you’re unemployed, it doesn’t mean your contributions pause. Now, should they? That’s a good question, but the current implementation makes sense. I imagine it does incentivize people to look for employment.
there is so much money in the world, and food/water, and housing that literally everyone - theoretically - could be fed and healthy without needing to pick on the unemployed first.
It’s not a matter of amount, it’s a matter of allocation. You have water shortages in a lot of places because agriculture uses massive amounts of potable water to irrigate (and can afford to do so- because water is and should be cheap). If agriculture were more efficient, we would have a lot more potable water- but making it more efficient takes money, resources, work, and ongoing maintenance. Similarly, the existence of vacant housing and homeless people doesn’t imply that we have enough housing to go around. A lot of vacant housing is vacant for a reason- it’s not ok to be shoving homeless people into collapsing apartments, unsafe buildings, a sixth-floor walkup when they’re in a wheelchair, etc. Food also is way more than the production cost, it’s also transporting the food to a place where it can be made available, keeping the food fresh and safe, and preparing it. For a lot of countries with an unstable food supply, the problem is much less that they don’t have enough food and more that it’s difficult or unsafe to get food to the tables of people who are hungry.
This might have been implied in your comment but it’s far more nuanced than “we just need to care more about feeding everybody”- there are real tradeoffs and real commitment of real work and resources, and important sacrifices both known and unknown to any system you design.
No. No, it does not. A poor tax makes no sense.
We can discuss where the money comes from, but the idea isn’t pie-in-the-sky wild. I don’t disagree with you.
In germany, the state is paying for your health insurance when you’re unemployed(along with other social insurances). More precisely the job centers are paying it, but they are ultimately paid by the state so…
A lesson I learned the hard way is the only way you can tell what your insurance actually covers is to read the fine print. The insurance company service reps can’t be relied upon and the medical office reps just make up an answer if they don’t know. Nor can you be sure the coverage statement from the insurance company is right wen they finally send it. That’s wrong a significant percent of the time too.
Are the people in the comments bots or real people? It’s too good to be true that so many people have switched to Lemmy!!
Everyone on Lemmy is a bot except you.
I checked and am definitely a robot.
We are bots😃
We are the robots https://youtu.be/VxF0aja7rLU
What the hell? Was someone drunk when they drew up that policy?
No, they were fully and completely sober and intelligent. Health insurance companies and totally and perfectly malicious.
Too much cocaine
I can’t help but wonder what happens to girls 15 and under when they get UTIs. Insurance company says sucks to be a girl?
Probably.
We knowingly vote for this shitty health care system every two years, so why would they ever change?
At the federal and state levels, we knowingly vote against King Heron so he doesn’t eat all the frogs. (That is, we vote against Republicans who are actively working to neuter democracy).
Getting social safety net stuff, justice reform or even election reform will require grassroots pressure bigger than yhe George Floyd / BLM protests.
And without those things, instead were going to get genocide politics and civil war.
I think we convince ourselves we’re voting the way we do for good reasons, but since Reagan, our votes have resulted in conservative outcomes no matter who we elect. Obama even had a supermajority for six months of his presidency, and we still had to hear the usual excuses people make in order to deflect from criticism of Democrats.
I agree with you though, meaningful change is impossible now. It would take an existential threat greater than COVID for it to happen, and in a country where 40,000,000 people can’t afford to miss a day of work, it’s just impossible.
Obama even had a supermajority for six months of his presidency, and we still had to hear the usual excuses people make in order to deflect from criticism of Democrats.
Another way of saying this is that with only 72 days of congress that Obama actually had a supermajority, he passed the largest expansion of healthcare coverage for Americans since medicare/medicaid.
I guess that’s a conservative outcome to you though.
he passed the largest expansion of healthcare coverage
Only if you can absorb being price gouged, otherwise you’re left in an ER to die. He had the power to enact universal health care and sided with lobbyists, and deserves full credit for it.
It should also be noted that Obamacare was modeled off of the system Mitt Romney implemented when he was a state governor. It’s literally a conservative system.
I’m going to assume you weren’t politically aware when Obamacare was being passed. It barely made it through as it was. There was absolutely zero chance universal health care could ever have been passed at that time. To claim Obama had the power to enact it is insane.
Also, since Obamacare contained huge expansions for medicaid eligibility, and Obamacare is, as you claim, “literally a conservative system”, wouldn’t medicaid for all be the most conservative system of them all?
Finally, no, no one is left in ERs to die, insured or not. Heck you don’t even need to be a citizen. That hasn’t been true since 1986. That said, you would get a hefty bill if they actually know who you are and I do fully support a system where that is not the case and one can get treatment without worrying about the cost.
Technically, if the only thing he could pass was a conservative system because the conservatives would block anything further left of it, then yeah, that explains how the ACA is a conservative system.
Obama was very much a neoliberal who mostly continued George W. Bush policies. (Bush was a far-right conservative, even if he was overshadowed by Trump). Curiously, Biden is continuing Trump policies, even to the point of letting people in crisis die.
The Democratic party has had stopgaps to keep it neoliberal (that is establishment, corporate-sponsored) since Carter, who was too left wing for its tastes. In both cases of Carter and Occasio-Cortez, party policy was changed to assure that no-one like them could be elected again. (Though the policy change of the DCCC after Occasio-Cortez was allegedly reversed due to public pressure.)
As Oxford noted, the US is not a true democracy, but an oligarchy with small democratic features. And now the GOP wants to make sure it’s a one-party system, so they don’t even have to bother campaigning.
There are different regulations regarding treatment dispensed directly by a pharmacist than those dispensed by a physician. Under 16 would generally have to be seen by an a doctor, often a pediatrician.
Aww man you poor sods. In any other civilised country that wouldn’t be so much of a worry. 😭
The fuck did you just call us?
This is mildly infuriating, I can give you a little more context though if you’re interested. I don’t know exactly about contracts between insurance companies and CVS so I can’t speak to that definitely. Probably something related to how much insurance is willing to pay minute clinic for such a short visit, and what things are feasible to address in such a short visit (hence CVS only allowing certain complaints).
I think this is something to do with the concept of “uncomplicated” vs “complicated” uti. Complicated utis are when there’s an increased danger of serious complications from a uti or increased likelihood of failing a typical antibiotic therapy. Utis in men are much much rarer than women, and are considered to be an automatic “complicated” uti by many. The greater length of the urethra in men helps prevent bacteria from being able to travel up to the bladder, whereas in women the short distance allows for this to happen much more frequently. So when a male has a UTI there is a much greater chance there will be complicating factors like prostate issues, structural problems, kidney stones, kidney infection, catheter use, atypical bacteria, etc. If you look more into their info on utis, they also state if they suspect any of those things, even in women, they won’t treat it and will just refer you to someone else, probably the Ed or a real urgent care clinic. Since the odds of that are much greater in men, they probably aren’t allowed to have longer appointments in minute clinic based on what insurance will pay for what they’re providing, they just decided to not see that at all in minute clinic. Looks like they do see men for sexually transmitted infections though, which are actually the most common cause of utis in young men, so if that’s a concern looks like they would be able to see people for that.
But I totally agree with you, fuck insurance companies in general.
That’s very interesting, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain this in so much detail. I looked at urgent care near me, but my insurance requires a referral from a primary care physician first. I will continue to explore my options.
I’ve never heard of urgent care requiring referral from a pcp, that wouldn’t make any sense as the whole point of urgent care is being seen more urgently than your primary physician can accommodate. And seeing people who don’t have a primary physician and keeping them out of the ed if not necessary. I would ask your insurance for that policy in writing, that can’t be right. And if it is it should be reported to that state insurance commission because that’s totally asinine. I mean never underestimate the dumbness of insurance companies but I think something might be being lost in translation here.
Did you read the top 2/3 of that reply? UTIS in MEN are HARDER TO TREAT. Go, please, see a doctor ASAP, even if it’s an out of network doctor. You’re overthinking this. Do not risk kidney stones because you’re mad at CVS or America or whatever. You need a doctor, not a Lemmy lawyer.
Thank you for your concern, and for talking some sense into me. I’m in pain and not being as rational as I usually am. I decided to go to urgent care and just… not pay. I’ll figure out my next move when I recover.
This is not scientific but cranberry juice - lots of it. Make sure it’s got decent actual cranberry content (Ocean Spray is good and iirc in the US you can get some pretty decent frozen concentrate which is cheaper.) If you have a mild infection it might even make it go away, but as you are seeking treatment it’s probably not mild. It may make you feel a bit better though, UTIs are bloody uncomfortable so whilst the system mucks about with your health, you can try to treat yourself as best you can. All the best.
Will that help for the retained bacteria in his prostate?
Yea its a complicated uti vs uncomplicated. I’m many cases that should be investigated further than a minute clinic. But it’s also the insurance
![[Final Update] My insurance won't cover UTIs for males. Yes, I'm in the US.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3f7f2fe9-6596-4427-a750-ca0a16636fcc.png){kind=link}