On Wednesday, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in midtown Manhattan in what police are calling a “premeditated, planned, targeted attack.” Days earlier, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said in a notice to providers that it would limit anesthesia coverage in some states if a surgery or procedure exceeds a set deadline (the rule, which was supposed to take effect in February, was canceled after one…riot).

The U.S. health insurance system relies on private insurance, which covers 200 million Americans, and government programs. Americans obtain insurance coverage through their employer, government programs such as Medicaid or Medicare, or by purchasing it themselves—often at high cost. Even if a person is insured, health insurance can be expensive because copays, deductibles, and premiums add up. If you go to an out-of-network provider for care (which can happen unintentionally, such as if you are taken to a hospital by ambulance), this can result in inflated bills.

And then there’s the fact that, according to state and federal regulators, about one in seven treatment requests are rejected by insurers. And most people don’t fight back — one study found that only 0.1% of denied claims under the Affordable Care Act, a law designed to make health insurance more affordable and prevent denials of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, were formally appealed becomes. This leads many people to pay out of pocket for treatment they thought was covered – or skip treatment altogether.

For many, the cost of life-saving care is too high, and medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America. Not to mention the emotional labor involved in navigating the complex system. There was widespread reaction to Thompson’s assassination and the Anthem policy along a similar line: a pervasive contempt for the state of health insurance in the United States. But the most graphic reactions are the personal ones, the stories of denied claims, fights with insurance agents, delayed treatment, bankruptcy filings and more.

“We sat in the hospital for three days”

Jessica Alfano, a content creator named @monetizationmom, shared her story on TikTok about battling an insurance company while her 1-year-old child was in the hospital with a brain tumor. When her daughter underwent emergency surgery at another hospital outside of her home state, UnitedHealthcare allegedly refused to allow her to be transferred by ambulance to New York City. She also couldn’t drive her daughter to the hospital because the insurance company had told them that if they left the hospital voluntarily and didn’t arrive by ambulance, they wouldn’t cover them at the nearest hospital. “I still remember spending days on the phone with UnitedHealthcare, nine months pregnant and about to give birth on my own, while my other baby lay in a hospital room,” she said.

“Terrible pain”

During her pregnancy, Allie, who posts on TikTok as @theseaowl44, went to the hospital in “unbearable pain,” she said in a video. After initially being sent home by a doctor who told her she was in pain from a urinary tract infection and that the baby was sitting on her bladder, she returned to the hospital and was told she was suffering from appendicitis. She was taken to a major hospital in St. Louis where she underwent emergency surgery. Her son survived the operation but died the next day after she gave birth to him.

About 45 minutes later, Allie suffered a pulmonary embolism and had to undergo emergency dilation and curettage (D&C) to remove the placenta, nearly dying in the process. After all of this, she learned that she had been admitted to an out-of-network hospital. “We ended up getting a bill from the hospital that was more than we paid for the house we live in, and it would probably take, I don’t know, 20 to 30 years to pay off that hospital bill. Allie said. “We decided we had to file for bankruptcy, but not before I had exhausted all avenues of appeal to (insurance company) Cigna – I wrote letters, I poured my heart out, I spoke on the phone, I explained our situation and our history and thought , there would surely be someone I would understand that this wasn’t my fault. On the third and final appeal, Cigna’s appellate doctor, because you are only allowed three, clearly told me that it was my fault for not checking and making sure when I died of a ruptured appendix in the emergency room at the hospital I was going to was sent by ambulance was part of my insurance network.”

Hundreds of similar stories are being told, but the comments section on these videos paints a picture in itself. “As a paraplegic, I wear leg braces and walk with crutches, and they tried to reject my new leg braces and only allow me a wheelchair. They wanted to take away my ability to WALK,” TikToker @ChickWithSticks commented.

“Totally healthy pregnancy until she wasn’t,” shared TikToker Meagan Pitts. “The stay in the NICU was covered by my insurance, the group of neonatologists hired by the NICU: Denied. I’m sorry, huh?”

Another wrote that her son was born with a congenital heart defect and required open-heart surgery. “My husband changed jobs and we moved to UHC,” she wrote. “You refused my son’s procedure in the cath lab!”

“The most stressful time of my life”

One Redditor, @Sweet_Nature_7015, wrote that they were struggling with UnitedHealthcare when she and her husband were in a “horrible car accident” that was the other driver’s fault. Since United Healthcare only spent two days in the hospital, the Redditor wrote that the case manager tried to find a way to “kick him out of the hospital” — but since her husband was in a coma, he couldn’t be safely discharged. “The stress of being told health insurance no longer covers this, we have to discharge your husband while he is in a coma and on a ventilator, etc. is ridiculous,” they wrote. “I have to sign some papers to give up all my husband’s benefits from his job – including his life insurance policy, which he had paid into, so we lost it. This allowed him to be covered by Medicaid. I cannot express how much stress UHC has caused on top of my husband’s (and my) health issues during the most stressful time of my life.”

The kicker, they wrote, was that years later the couple was awarded legal compensation by the other driver in the accident — and “UHC went to court and took the entire compensation as payment for the two days they spent in the hospital.” had.”

“I’m one of the lucky ones”

In the same thread, Reddit user @sebastorio wrote that they went to the emergency room for an eye injury, which their doctor said could have resulted in vision loss. “UHC denied my claim and I paid $1,400 out of pocket,” they said. “I am one of the lucky ones. I can’t imagine how people would feel if that happened in critical care or life-saving care.”

“Constant stream of hostile debt collection calls”

Redditor @colonelcatsup shared their experience with insurance while having a baby, writing that they went into premature labor while insured with one company, but their insurance switched to United Healthcare at midnight. “I gave birth in the morning. “My daughter was born two months early and was in the NICU for weeks, so the bill was over $80,000 and United refused to pay it, saying it wasn’t their responsibility,” they wrote . “As well as dealing with a premature baby, I had a constant stream of hostile calls and mail from the hospital for 18 months. My credit took a hit.”

Eventually, her employer hired a lawyer to fight UHC, and the insurance company ended up paying. “I will never forgive them for the additional stress placed on me during the first year and a half of my child’s life,” they wrote.

“Debt or Death”

On Substack, where she posted an excerpt from her Instagram, author Bess Kalb also shared her experience with health insurance coverage when she was bleeding during her pregnancy and was asked by a paramedic what insurance she had before deciding whether to would go to the nearest health insurance hospital. When her husband said to take Kalb to the hospital, even though she didn’t know the insurance implications, her bill came to more than $10,000.

“The private insurance industry is forcing millions of Americans to choose between debt or death,” Kalb wrote. “Often, spookily, the result is both. If I had been worried about an ambulance being out of reach, I would have waited at home or in traffic for an hour to get to my doctor’s office through Los Angeles, sitting in the waiting room bleeding to death and perhaps not being here to see write this, and neither does my son.”

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