Insurance Won't Cover Smartphones, When Pricey Alternatives Exist 419
consonant writes "The NY Times has an article on insurers refusing to cover cheaper devices such as iPhones and netbooks which may be used by the speech-impaired, and instead requires them to acquire devices that cost from 10 to 20 times as much. The reason? 'Insurance is supposed to cover medical devices, and smartphones or PCs can be used for nonmedical purposes, like playing video games or Web browsing.' From the article: 'For the millions of Americans with A.L.S., Down syndrome, autism, strokes and other speech-impairing conditions, the insurance industry's aversion to covering mainstream devices adds to the challenges they face. Advocates say using an everyday device to communicate can ease the stigma and fear of making the adjustment. At the same time, current policies mean that the government and private insurers may be spending unnecessary dollars on specialty machines.'"
Perfect storm of regulation and corruption (Score:5, Interesting)
At the same time, current policies mean that the government and private insurers may be spending unnecessary dollars on specialty machines
That's the point, isn't it?
On the one hand, devices have to go through insane amounts of certification to pass as an official medical device. On the other hand, I'm sure medical device manufacturers really don't want cheap (or even reasonably priced) software on commodity devices eating their lunch.
I suspect the regulations are doing their work for them, but if they weren't, they'd be colluding with the insurers to make damn sure they didn't support commodity devices.
Re:Now wait for it to be a government agency. (Score:3, Interesting)
A big contributor to the lack of choice in health insurance is that employers treat it as a benefit, rather than compensation (if all those people were shopping with the dollars their employer is currently spending to cover them, there is some chance that there would be better options available, and probably even pools that were slightly easier to get into).
Of course, another issue with employer provided insurance is that there is small scale socialism going on (employers are willing to employ people with chronic conditions that are essentially not insurable (the condition), and the organization simply pays the cost of their medical care (even if it happens to be embedded in the premiums they pay)).
Totally Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Insurance is about risk management. It's a financial product, not a health one. I pay someone x amount of dollars to provide me the right get y amount of money back based on a risk. By demanding that insurance companies provide all of these things that have absolutely nothing to do with risk, you've screwed this country up. You've basically, like all liberals, twisted something else an excuse to go steal some money.
If you want to have money for people with chronic conditions, make them a federal problem and pay for it with tax money. I recommend taxing intellectual property and imports to come up with the dough.
But for me, all I want is a financial product that says I get coverage for if I have a sudden expensive illness. I don't need or want the federal government, or my employer, to do that.
1. Get employers out of health
2. Put chronic illnesses onto the government
3. Cut everything out of insurance that is non-risk related.
Duh.
Re:Fraud-bait... tort-bait (Score:4, Interesting)
I would think the limiting factor should be getting a doctor's diagnosis. If a doctor signs-off, and says "person X has condition Y" and the policy covers condition Y, then anything that does the job of helping with condition Y should be fair game. Random people can't try to claim their smartphone as an health expense: only people with conditions that the smartphone helps alleviate.
(Of course, I'm being hopelessly naive about how health insurance works. You can tell I grew up in a country with universal healthcare.)
Re:GREED (Score:3, Interesting)
How many $300 iphones would need to break before it became more expensive than an $8000 text to speech device? And I'm pretty sure a $200 ipod touch would do the job just as well.
why can't folks pay for their own devices? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have 2 cousins who are deaf. They have been using smart phones for a long time rather than TTY devices. In addition, they are all over the net as a means of communication.
They have always paid for this out of pocket. Amazingly, they never had insurance companies to pay for their TTY devices in the first place (those devices cost around 400 bucks about twenty years ago) so I think they are happy just paying for a cheaper service.
I think getting closed captioning added to all televisions was the biggest savings for them. I know my aunt and uncle paid about 20 bucks a month or so and a couple hundred bucks up front for closed captioning devices about 20 years ago.
I'm not sure what insurance you would have that would have paid for these things in the past. I'm sure there are some plans, but honestly, for most 'normal' folks without great insurance plans, these things were just expenses that everyone paid for and just looked at as part of the expense of raising a child, no different than medicine, food, and clothing.
US medical system (Score:4, Interesting)
As the Obama healthcare reform is also international news, I read an analysis of the US medical system here in the local newspaper in The Netherlands. The US as a country spends twice as much for it's healthcare as Germany and France, while only 83% of the US Americans have an insurance.
This is because US healthcare is not about health; it is about the caring industry. There's no room for prevention (as there's no profit from prevention), there's only room for Care.
TFA seems just like another example of it.
Re:Fraud-bait... tort-bait (Score:3, Interesting)
The last time I had a serous cold, my Doctor prescribed Over the Counter cold symtom drugs and Chicken soup. My insurance did not cover either item. The OTC drugs because they can be obtained without a prescription (and were since they are cheaper that way) and the soup because it's just normal food and the biggest cost was the time my wife spent boiling it.
If I was in a none tropical climate he might have ordered me to keep the heat up and sleep under a blanket. Insurance won't cover those item either. Hell they don't even cover the giant office chair my brother's employer got for his bad back. They could have goten a fancy smancy orthopedic chair but the 20% copay on that is more than the total price of the giant chair (by giant I mean it makes my 6'3" 180 Lb. Brother look like a child).
American Medical Horrors Dwarf the NHS' Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
People gripe about the NHS, and like every medical system in the world, it does have its problems, but I've seen worse reports about far worse hospitals and systematic medical abuse in the US. Indeed, google "malpractice", "medical abuse", and "nursing home abuse" and you'll find the horrors in the American system dwarf those of most of the rest of the industrialized world, not just in number, but in severity.
As someone who has used both the American and British systems (as well as the French and German system by the way), I can unequivocably say that the NHS is as good as and often better than the American system by every metric, including timliness of treatment, quality of treatment, professionalism, cost, you name it. Unlike most of the right-wing ignoramouses here I've actually travelled beyond the borders of my country and indeed lived many years abroad, and have seen different systems first hand. Wait times in the US for privately insured patients are, contrary to myth and right-wing propoganda, at least as long as they are in the UK (where I currently reside), and longer than in France and Germany (both of which also have what Americans call "socialized" medicine).
And before my fellow countrymen start chanting "Best in the World" to themselves, they really ought to stop and ask themselves why the richest Russians, Chinese, Arabs, and Europeans all tend to go to France, Germany and the UK for their treatment rather than the US (not always, but more often than not). Hell, even Farah Faucette ended up travelling to Germany to treat her cancer because she couldn't get the proper treatment in the US (and lived for years longer than expected as a result). Why do so many travel to France, Germany, and the UK rather than the United States? I'll give you a hint: it isn't about money (these people are richer than God), nor about getting a Visa (these people belong to the moneyed elite and can buy their way into anyplace, be it the European Union, the United States, hell, even Switzerland). These people go where they believe they'll get the best medical treatment bar none, at any price, and more often than not, it isn't the United States. And that will probably continue, no matter how often we lie to ourselves about being "the best in the world." We're not, in many things, most especially medicine, and it's high time we recognized this and remediated it.
Re:Fraud-bait... tort-bait (Score:3, Interesting)
If a doctor signs-off, and says "person X has condition Y" and the policy covers condition Y, then anything that does the job of helping with condition Y should be fair game.
If someone has a limp, they'd have an easier time getting around with a car. Should the policy give out free cars to everyone with a limp?
Re:Fraud or stupidity (Score:2, Interesting)
Why the H*LL should you expect medical insurance to pay for something
like this. There is no free lunch. Someone somewhere has to pay for
it eventually. It doesn't just magically pop out of the either. That
"free" device you get that costs 10x or 20x as much is paid for by
SOMEONE. It can be a tax payer or some other customer of the insurance
company.
Quit being a helpless twit. Quit perpetuating nanny state nonsense.
Take responsibility for yourself. Take charge of your life and just
BUY THE DANG THING.
If it's 1/10th to 1/20th the price of a "proper" device it's probably
even affordable too.
"free stuff" is why insurance is so expensive.
Re:It's government's fault (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>It's easy to claim that the government imposes some maximum limit of care by law
Strawman argument - that's not what I said. What government imposes is a minimum amount of care, which seems like a good idea but has unintended consequences, like not letting a hearing-impaired person get a cheap Iphone but instead have to spend $4000 on a government-approved gadget. Or forcing asthma suffers to buy "environmentally friendly" inhalers that cost $40 a piece, instead of the cheaper $2 versions that they've been using for the last fifty years. (See my signature).
Government doesn't set-out to be evil. On the contrary most politicians are trying to do good. But government, being a monopoly, often creates bad results due to the unintended side effects. And citizens suffer because of it.
Re:Soo..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Every claim adds to your history as a cost to the insurance company.
File a claim for your iPhone, and if you don't have replacement cost coverage, you will get a pittance, relatively speaking.
And then your premiums will go up. Look around for cheaper coverage, and there will be none - the other companies see your CLUE report and realize you file claims.
You will pay more in premiums than you ever did for the iPhone.
Now, this seems counterintuitive. Why would using your insurance actually cost you more? Ah, there is an answer. You see, insurance should be there for losses that you CAN'T afford. You can spring for the iPhone, it's having yoru house burn down or the back room be crushed by a falling tree that you want and need insurance for. And for the burglar that slips on the pool deck and sues you for their sprained back. Actually, you get insurance to pay the lawyers to defend you against that, but another topic...
So, perhaps you buy the carrier's insurance for the iPhone - a little pricey, but cheaper than having your homeowner's insurance 'skyrocket' for the next 5 years.
True story - I got a Palm Pilot 5000 when it was first out. Sweet. Dropped it the third day I had it, cracked the screen magnificently. Sent it in with $100 and fixed good as new. Dropped it again two days later. I learned to treat it gently, and never cracked another one, from the IIIc to V to Vx. The next item I cracked was my Toshiba Gigabeat, in my gym bag, whacked a door frame. $30, some time to tear it apart, and I have a white S60. I learned to care for my devices, a lesson re-learned occasionally... If you're hard on stuff, you learn not to be, get protection, or pay. Life isn't fair, just real.
Re:Fraud-bait... tort-bait (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the price difference between a $600 phone and a $20,000 specialist device, buying 100,000 phones rather than 10,000 special devices would be a BARGAIN for the insurance companies. They would break even with 97% of all such claims being fraud. If they can keep fraud below 97%, they win!
Re:Fraud or stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
Your argument seems to be that insurance companies shouldn't actually pay out on claims, because that would make their customers "irresponsible" and "helpless twits", and you're absolutely correct that if all insurance companies refused to pay claims, then the price of insurance would surely plummet. But there's some sort of logical flaw in your argument that I can't quite put my finger on...
I believe the high cost of insurance is largely due to insurers wasting money, rather than insurers not telling their customers that they should just buy it themselves. But that's just me.
But in all seriousness, if you're ever in the market for insurance look me up. You would be a dream customer.
Re:IT'S MADONNA'S BIRTHDAY TODAY! (Score:4, Interesting)
It reminds me of a lawsuit that the BBC got into once back in the 1980's. One of their consumer programs performed a comparison between "officially recommended" telephone units for the disabled and off-the-shelf novelty telephones over the cost/usability ratio. The officially recommended handsets were large, clunky, came in only one color and hand to be wall mounted or bolted to a table.
The best comparison that could be made today would be between this type of phone [tiresias.org] and a novelty phone with high contrast black/white and a loudspeaker for hand-free calling.
The company that actually made the clunky type threatened to sue because they had to go through all sorts of usability studies for each of the different categories of disability, then get approval to market their product as a disability aid. Because they were intended for use in hospitals, they also had to withstand the wear and tear of being in a public place.
Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
So accept the more expensive machine, sell it, and buy an iphone or whatever it is you want. Profit?!?! (Something like that, right?)
Re:Fraud-bait... tort-bait (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure many Insurance Company bureaucrats in places to decide your care are also not doctors. One difference, however, may be that Medicare bureaucrats have no profit motive.
I'm not trying to start an argument, it's something to consider.