GBA

You may remember a few months ago, I shared the story of an ongoing battle with my old insurance company.

So the insurance I had through Amazon, I then paid for for another 18 months after I stopped working there via Cobra.

And Liam, as you may recall, has Crohn’s disease and he’s on a medication that I injected him twice a month, Humira.

And his pediatric gastroenterologist is like, we need to test his blood every few months to see how many antibodies his body is creating to respond to the Humira because more is bad.

We need to make sure that the medication can still be taking effect in his body.

And so we would go to LabCorp and have his blood drawn, which of course Liam loved.

He actually hates his blood getting drawn far more than he hates the shot of Humira.

But we would go and get that done.

And the claim would get submitted to insurance.

And Primera would continually deny coverage of the LabCorp visits to draw his blood.

And so they would say, you owe 250 something dollars.

And this happened five times for five blood tests.

And they said that the test was experimental.

So they kept on denying it and we would talk to them and they would keep on denying it.

And eventually we started the appeals process.

We go through the appeal and you have to do it all by postal mail, which is hilarious.

And everything about the process from their side is designed to make you just accept your defeat.

But eventually they sent us a letter in the mail saying our appeal had been denied.

And Lauren at that point was ready to give up and I said, no, let’s not give up.

And I did the second appeal.

Then they sent us a letter saying that the second appeal was rejected.

And in that rejection, they said that we had done something wrong.

We hadn’t gotten the request for the second appeal in in time.

So it wasn’t that our second appeal failed.

It was that our second appeal didn’t count because it didn’t come early enough.

But I noted, as I talked about on a previous episode, that the way they quoted the prior letter lied.

So getting into all of it doesn’t really matter, although it was quite fun for me.

But they quoted the first letter saying, we have to receive your thing by this date.

But the letter said, you have to postmark your thing by this date.

So when they misquoted it and they were demonstrably wrong, I really went ham on them on the phone.

And the guy’s like, well, we didn’t intentionally misquote it.

We meant to honor the spirit of what the letter said.

I’m like, nope, you intentionally misquoted it and you lied.

There’s a difference between when a thing arrives and when a thing is postmarked.

And my thing was there in plenty of time.

And we go back and forth and he says, I need a week to investigate this some more.

And he called me back a week later and he said, well, we’ve decided that we’re going to allow your second appeal to proceed.

And we got a letter in the mail yesterday that our second appeal was approved.

Meaning they’re going to finally pay LabCorp.

What’s funny about this is that LabCorp has been hounding us for months and months.

Collections and all of it because we wouldn’t pay this bill.

And I kept telling LabCorp, we’re currently in an appeal process.

And they would say, oh, no problem.

We’ll mark this one as an appeal process.

And we will stop reminding you.

And then they would continue to call every day.

And sometimes email us.

And sometimes text us about wanting us to pay those bills.

But now it all goes away.

So I won.

And boy, it’s a lot of pride.

We do the thing where the U.S.

Post Office sends you photos of all the mail you’re going to get today.

And I saw yesterday I was getting a letter from Primera.

And I obviously didn’t know what the letter was going to say until I opened it.

But I was very pleased to open it and see in big bold letters that my appeal was approved.

Anyway, insurance companies are terrible.

And I cannot believe that we just continue to accept the state of things.

It’s weird that nobody ever expresses intense anger about health insurance in the U.S.

Just kidding.

But it’s unbelievable to me that we’re just stuck in this system.

And it’s terrible.

So I thought you should know.

Anyway, I won, though.

And that’s fun.

And I was so excited about winning that I decided not to do the theme song until now.

Your Daily Lex.

I mean, that’s really all I have to say.

I can’t remember if last time I talked about this one thing that I said.

And I’m not proud of the thing that I said on the call, but I also don’t regret it.

So I accept that it was necessary.

And again, I’m not proud of it.

But when I was fighting with the insurance company on the phone, and I was saying, look, I think I know I talked about this.

I said, I respect that this is your job and everybody has to have a job.

And I know that your job must be miserable telling people things they don’t want to hear all day.

But in this case, you know, I’ve got you, right?

You guys said one thing is what your letter said.

But what the letter actually said is different.

So I caught you and you are wrong.

And he’s trying to defend this, although it’s very clear from the way his demeanor shifts when I point this out that he knows he’s losing.

I’m rich.

I will spend the time and money in court to prove that you guys were wrong.

Even if it means I spend significantly more than you owe me.

I’m not going to lose.

Again, I’m not proud of having said it, but I did say it.

And I don’t know how much of that was instrumental in the victory.

Anyway, God bless America.

Lex.