Member-only story
There Is No Right Way to File A Claim with United Healthcare
How Corporate Stonewalling Creates Massive Profits for their CEOs
I spent both Thursday and Friday afternoons the week before Thanksgiving on the phone with United Healthcare representatives. What I learned is that they have intentionally created a byzantine thicket of policies and processes that leave patients with no clear pathway to ensure that care will be covered.
Background — Insufficient Care in Rural Areas Requires Many of Us to Go Out of Network, Which Isn’t Sufficiently Covered By Insurance
In January 2022, I had a second concussion. The effects were significant enough that I had to go on disability and then eventually lost my job. I live in a small city in southwestern Colorado, and we have a regional medical center and other services, but sometimes it can still be hard to find specialists. Or if we lose the specialist we have, it can leave a huge hole. I later found out that the neurologist I’d been seeing after my first concussion had died skiing, apparently just before I’d had my second concussion. Between that and doctors still being overwhelmed post-COVID, there were no neurologists who saw people with concussions.
