Inhumane Humana

I've known Diogenes a long time, and I've gotten used to his cynical, indignant, sometimes abrasive ways. He's generally an even-tempered soul, so when he returned from a task that had taken him away from the blog for a time, I was surprised to see him exceptionally angry.

The few times I have witnessed Dio's prodigious anger it has been directed at government officials. This time the target was an insurance company.

Diogenes had been away for a while at the behest of his longtime friend Sharon. She was having a problem with Humana, Inc. with whom she has a Medicare replacement health plan. The company was denying a perfectly good claim for no good reason, and she thought Dio might be able to help.

Sharon is a diabetic who uses an insulin pump. Insurance companies have a habit of putting insulin on the top or next to top pricing tier, making this truly life-saving medication very expensive for the 29 million Americans who need it. But Medicare offers a break for diabetics who use pumps. Their insulin is covered by Part B--the medical part, rather than Part D--the prescription medication part. The difference can save pump users hundreds of dollars in co-pays.

The reason for Diogenes' anger was that for a couple of days and hours of telephone calls he had been working on Sharon's behalf to get Humana to cover her insulin as the Medicare guidelines require: through Part B. The people Dio spoke with at Humana were uniformly deaf to his arguments. He was offered a long list of reasons--some of them bizarre, some ridiculous, some self-contradictory, and all false--why the company would not allow Sharon's insulin to be charged to Part B. The reason? Money, of course. The higher the co-pays paid by members, the more money goes into shareholders' and top managers' pockets.

Sharon told Dio she had had the same problem a few years ago with United Healthcare, which was why she had switched companies. Diogenes told me he was equally angry with Humana and with himself for not being able to solve his friend's problem.

So Diogenes is left fuming while giant corporations like Humana and United Healthcare continue to bend the rules and to prey on people with chronic illnesses by making their life-preserving medications so expensive they have to sacrifice something else in their lives to pay for them.

Sharon had said she had contacted her Congressional representatives about the problem and had hoped for some relief, but with the Trump ascendancy all those hopes are dashed.

This situation is not limited to diabetics. With corporations free to run amok, charging ever higher prices for their goods, the American people become more impoverished. This is something we must address if we don't want to live a Third World life.

--Richard Brown