Blue Cross and Blue Shield denied payment for the proton therapy Robert “Skeeter” Salim’s doctor ordered to fight his throat cancer. But he was no ordinary patient. He was a celebrated litigator. And he was ready to fight.
Is this supposed to be a feel-good story of the little guy working within the system?
No. The story admits that early on. It’s yet another expose on how crooked the system is so that even one of the elite have to fight to get the treatment that their doctor recommends.
Top trial lawyers with personal doctors who are willing to invest tons of their own time into your case. Personal doctors who also happen to be experts on the technology in question.
Overcoming this type of abuse is utterly impossible for the average person, as the patient himself acknowledges.
Yeah, the article even describes it as a Goliath vs Goliath story. Good for him I guess, but the rest of us are still fucked. My wife has skin cancer and her dermatologist recommended some tests to see if there were better treatments available and if our kids would be at a higher risk. The insurance denied it. Yay America?
It’s called an Orphan Crushing Machine story. As in, “how nice it is that the whole community came together to raise money to stop little orphan Annie from being tossed into the orphan crushing machine!”. Stories that don’t bother to ask the important questions like “Why is there an orphan-crushing machine?” and “Why on earth did they all have to raise money to pay someone to stop an orphan from being tossed into said machine?!”
Once you learn to recognize them, you realize it’s what 99% of ‘feel good’ news stories really are.
But this one is a lot more sensitive to that narrative than most, so I’d still recommend the read.
I’d argue that is ProPublica, so generally very far from the kind of media outlet that would publish feel good stories, and that the story itself isn’t even a feel good story: even the rich, powerful attorney with the powerful lawyer friend and the powerful doctor friend had to pay for the treatment out of his own pocket, and the story ends with the insurance company, after losing the car, still only paying a fraction of that after having dragged out the entire case for years and years.
Is this supposed to be a feel-good story of the little guy working within the system?
It feels like a capitalist dystopia where health insurance will tell everyone else to go die in a ditch.
No. The story admits that early on. It’s yet another expose on how crooked the system is so that even one of the elite have to fight to get the treatment that their doctor recommends.
Orphan Crushing Machine
Good news everyone
That’s pretty much what insurance does these days. Too bad we’re not all top trial lawyers.
Top trial lawyers with personal doctors who are willing to invest tons of their own time into your case. Personal doctors who also happen to be experts on the technology in question.
Overcoming this type of abuse is utterly impossible for the average person, as the patient himself acknowledges.
Yeah, the article even describes it as a Goliath vs Goliath story. Good for him I guess, but the rest of us are still fucked. My wife has skin cancer and her dermatologist recommended some tests to see if there were better treatments available and if our kids would be at a higher risk. The insurance denied it. Yay America?
It’s called an Orphan Crushing Machine story. As in, “how nice it is that the whole community came together to raise money to stop little orphan Annie from being tossed into the orphan crushing machine!”. Stories that don’t bother to ask the important questions like “Why is there an orphan-crushing machine?” and “Why on earth did they all have to raise money to pay someone to stop an orphan from being tossed into said machine?!”
Once you learn to recognize them, you realize it’s what 99% of ‘feel good’ news stories really are.
But this one is a lot more sensitive to that narrative than most, so I’d still recommend the read.
I’d argue that is ProPublica, so generally very far from the kind of media outlet that would publish feel good stories, and that the story itself isn’t even a feel good story: even the rich, powerful attorney with the powerful lawyer friend and the powerful doctor friend had to pay for the treatment out of his own pocket, and the story ends with the insurance company, after losing the car, still only paying a fraction of that after having dragged out the entire case for years and years.
And the only people who can fight it are the powerful and elite, who, it just so happens, won’t even consider doing so until the problem impacts them.
My first thought was oh is that supposed to make me feel better that he had to be a bigshot lawyer to be able to get healthcare?