Readers React: Think it’s hard as an insurance customer? Try being a healthcare provider

To the editor: Max Read’s article on dealing with a full-body rash while trying to obtain COBRA health insurance through United Healthcare really hit home. I want to convey my deepest sympathies in his dealings with the insurance industry. (“My struggle to get health insurance was more irritating than my full-body rash,” Opinion, Dec. 3)

I’d also like to say that unless you are a care provider as I am, you probably have no idea of the gyrations we can go through to get paid for an honest day’s work. A few private companies are great, but there are many exceptions.

The United Healthcare system, for example, seems to be hitting a new low in assisting providers. It has come across lately as doing anything it can to prevent payments such as asking for codes that don’t exist, or falsely claiming it had issued me a check and refusing to believe that I didn’t receive it.

I could go on and on, but the picture is that many providers refuse to take insurance from some companies.

If enough of us leave the system, maybe the chief executive who made $66 million in 2014 might have to take a pay cut. Can’t a society such as ours do something about the sorry state of healthcare?

Pat Powell, Laguna Woods

The writer is a marriage and family therapist.

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