Lucky

A totally not surprising, in any fucking way, headline:

UnitedHealth reduced hospitalizations for nursing home seniors. Now it faces wrongful death claims

Yes, this is the same UnitedHealthcare which denies 33% of all medical claims. This is the same insurance conglomerate whose monstrously overpaid CEO was under investigation by the DOJ for insider trading when he was shot on a Manhattan street.

UnitedHealthcare has expanded into the nursing home biz. Through their Optum division, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are theoretically deployed when there’s a patient need, a problem, during Monday though Friday, 9-5 hours. Weekends, at night or in the early morning? Just do your very best to avoid having any unfortunate health issues in those off hours and days…k? I mean, you can probably connect to an Optum employee on their “hotline.” Who knows where the call centers are and how long the hold times are though.

Those death claims?

Three nursing home residents died because employees of the American healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group helped delay or deny them critical hospital care, two pending lawsuits and a complaint to state authorities have alleged.

In Georgia, the family of a woman named Cindy Deal filed a lawsuit alleging that the 58-year-old died because Optum and her nursing home failed to hospitalize her for hours after she started foaming at the mouth and appeared to be having a seizure.

In Ohio, the family of a retiree named Mary Grant filed a lawsuit claiming that the 70-year-old died after Optum and Grant’s nursing home failed to send her to the hospital, though she had suffered a traumatic head injury and began vomiting.

In New York, a physician’s assistant named Christopher Bieniek alleged in a complaint to state authorities that a 63-year-old nursing home resident died due to “gross negligence” by an Optum employee. The employee refused to hospitalize the man, despite his kidney failure, according to text messages Bieniek says he shared with state investigators. (source) 

I only mention it but this is wicked personal for yurs disabled truly. Remember my surgery-a-thon years? I had five – count 'em, FIVE big fat neurosurgeries in the space of three years. After one surgery I went from hospital to inpatient rehab and then they had me go to a nursing home for further rehab. Though I’d chosen a well reviewed joint, the place was a complete horror show. From non-functioning call buttons (or aides who simply chose not to respond), beds that couldn’t be adjusted, ignored menus (they brought the food they wanted to bring regardless of what I noted on my menu – forget about me being vegetarian and lactose intolerant) and god forbid anyone remember that I’m deaf and, at the time, in a wheelchair, unable to walk to the can on my own.

The place seemed so utterly incompetent and uncaring that I was sure I wasn’t getting all my meds and, boyhowdy, I take a shitload of ‘em. They include anti-seizure pills. Without these, if I’m ignored, I’m toast. I texted Ten and Jen after a few days and told them I needed to come home. I was afraid that, if I stayed in that house of horrors, I would probably die (and they probably wouldn't notice for at least 24 hours).

I’m very lucky to have Ten, Jen, and Oni at home. VERY lucky. I found out a few months after I got home that a friend of mine had died at this same nursing home. Maybe she would have anyway – her NF2 was far more advanced than mine. I’ll never know.

Under Medicare Advantage, the government pays insurers like UnitedHealthcare a set amount of money based on the expected healthcare needs of each senior enrolled in their insurance plans for long-term nursing home residents. The less insurers spend on residents’ care, the more they have left over in taxpayer funds for potential profit.
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Two of the whistleblowers, both former Optum nurse practitioners, filed declarations with Congress, alleging that company managers improperly pressured them to reduce hospital transfers for nursing home seniors, and to get residents onto medical directives, such as “Do-Not-Resuscitate” orders, that could pre-empt costly emergency room care. The declarations also allege that supervisors pushed them to creatively code patient diagnoses to increase federal payments for the company.

What do these rich, healthy fat cats care if we die? We’re just a drag on the system, right? Forget the fact that our tax buckos have been paying into the system for billions of fucking years now.

So far, I've been lucky. Not everyone is.