Hmm, it says here they'll only cover this one during the new moon.
Yes America, health insurance companies are still looking for every opportunity
to screw you.
[S]ince health insurance companies can no longer shun the sick to maximize profits -- either by denying coverage to people based on their medical histories or by rescinding the policies of paying customers who fall ill and rack up bills -- insurers are employing other tactics to shift costs to sick people and make it harder to get health care, consumer advocates say.
Among those ways; upping deductibles, continuing to deny treatments under the claim that they aren't really necessary or through bureaucratic fiddlings, and individual companies finding classes of drugs that they simply don't feel like paying for.
"Where we've seen the problems is putting every single HIV drug, including generics, on the highest tier, and that with very high coinsurance, like 40 or 50 percent," said Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute. "There's plenty of plans in Florida that don't do this, and charge $10, $20 a copay for the same drugs." [...]
[One doctor] returned to the clinic after Memorial Day weekend and attempted to follow up on a request she'd made to refer a patient to a specialist. The insurance company said her request already had been rejected because she hadn't called back quickly enough.
"Their clock started ticking on Sunday. Monday was a national holiday, and so when 48 hours went by, they denied," said Wang. "A conspiracy theorist would wonder."
I don't think it takes much of a conspiracy theorist to suss out "denying claims because you weren't in on the weekend" as an actual conspiracy. The old dynamic hasn't changed: if for-profit companies can make more money by not covering medical care, they're not going to do it. Denying treatment to cancer or AIDS patients means more profit to the company, more profit to the company makes the shareholders happier, and if any of those shareholders have cancer they better hope their insurance comes from somewhere else.
So long as we insist on the notion that someone somewhere ought to collect a bigger paycheck if they let you, personally, die, there will be people who are more than happy to try to do that.