It’s unfortunate that so many Americans accept without complaint that insurance companies have such a big say in what is and isn’t medically necessary. For example, it’s absurd to say patients shouldn’t test for a condition because they’re asymptomatic. Many medical conditions are asymptomatic—right up to the moment they become either fatal or too far advanced to effectively treat. (That’s the entire point of medical screening.) Only an insurance company can make such an absurd argument with a straight face.The point of STI screening is to break the chain of transmission. This is why other developed countries offer free chlamydia screening to men and women. However, this is not how the American healthcare system works. It doesn't matter what's best for you, best for your partner, or best for public health. What's best for Aetna is to pay for fewer tests. If you have chlamydia and don't know it, then Aetna doesn't have to pay for your treatment. If you give chlamydia to someone else, then they're probably insured by a different company, so Aetna doesn't have to pay for their treatment either.
Insurance companies beaver away at creating arcane exclusions that normal people have neither the time nor information to understand. It’s little wonder that no other advanced nation on the planet is looking at our health care system and saying: “we want that.”
Statistics: Posted by Regal 56 — Thu Jun 20, 2024 11:28 pm — Replies 35 — Views 1398