When my brother was 15 back in 2002 he had stomach pains, our insurance company kept denying MRI scans for him because he was young and it was “probably a pulled muscle” for 6 months they kept denying his claims until eventually you could physically see a lump in his stomach, by then he had stage 4 Leiomyosarcoma and a 0% chance of survival.
He did chemo until he was 18, that’s when he was no longer eligible to be on my parent’s health insurance plan since this was pre Obama care. When we tried getting him insurance he was denied due to his cancer being a pre-existing condition. He died 3 years later, his doctor estimated that if they had caught it when he first went in his chance of survival would have been 70%.
I thoroughly hate privatized health insurance and still to this day blame them for my brother’s death. Today marks 15 years he’s been dead, he’d be 36 now.
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Sorry for your loss.
Private insurance also completely missed my moms stage 4 stomach cancer. My dad took her to the VA and they’re the ones that caught it, albeit too late.
She’s not gone yet, but it’s been a rough couple weeks for her after her last round of chemo.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
>still to this day blame them for my brother’s death
Of course. Because they are to blame for your brother’s death.
Your story is heartbreaking. I am so sorry for your brother and your family.
Privatized healthcare will always kill people. That is because the most important thing stock price not patient welfare.
Quarterly and annual increases in profitability are incompatible with rising healthcare costs and an aging population.
So very sorry for the loss of your brother.
Luigi did nothing wrong
My mom had doctors who said they caught it early. She did chemo and everything she was supposed to do. Imagine her surprise when a week after her she goes to get surgery and the surgeon says I’m sorry, it’s metastasized. Pancreatic cancer took her in a year. She found out summer 23 and gone fall 24. Her main doctor can never look her husband in the face.
I’m sorry that we have to go through this.
If I were you, I would’ve been the first Luigi.
The rest of the world laughs when they watch videos of Americans doing surgery on themselves or asking online for a diagnosis. They call it frontier medicine.
The sad reality is that most of us are one serious illness away from being broke and/or dead. I often have to take my daughters to urgent care because our primary care physician doesn’t have time that day or the right equipment for what is needed.
I fear the day that my kids need life saving medicine or surgery and get denied by my insurance because they deem it not necessary and so the thing doesn’t happen. U.S. medical insurance is a predatory scam that kills more Americans every year than most other things. It should not exist.
I’m sorry for your loss but I can tell you that there’s lots of us out there that can blame our medical insurance practices for most deaths.
UK here, free healthcare isn’t any better, unsurprisingly… It’s so fucking bad. I’m sorry for your loss
Luigi is not celebrated for his good looks only
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Yeah, this is why I do not back down from saying that for-profit health insurance companies are terrorist organizations and their CEOs are terrorist leaders.
They are an active threat to life at all moments and thus the human right of self-defense against their violence is applicable and appropriate to exercise.
Same for my mom. She was uninsured, and the hospital continuously sent her home after she had a stroke. No help or rehab or anything. They would not do more than the bare minimum to help. Tried to get her insurance through medicaid, but it took too long to process.
My heart goes out to you. That’s awful.
Healthcare companies are playing with fire. How long until more people start to off them?
I’m so incredibly sorry for your loss. Your story hits hard because it’s not just a tragedy-it’s a glaring example of how broken the system can be. I had a close family friend who faced something similar: their mother’s early symptoms were dismissed repeatedly by insurance companies refusing to cover necessary tests, delaying diagnosis of ovarian cancer until it was too late. The frustration and helplessness watching a loved one suffer because of red tape is indescribable.
Your brother’s story is a heartbreaking reminder that access to timely, affordable healthcare isn’t just a policy debate-it’s literally a matter of life and death. It’s infuriating that pre-existing conditions and profit motives can stand between people and the care they desperately need. Thank you for sharing this; it’s stories like yours that should fuel ongoing fights for healthcare reform and remind us why universal, compassionate coverage matters so much. Sending you strength and respect on this difficult anniversary.
My friend’s mom had breast cancer and the insurance company sent approval for her lifesaving procedure two days AFTER SHE DIED while waiting for them to approve it.
It is a wonder it took as long as it did for a Luigi-style assassination to happen. And when the GOP finally get their way, we will be dragged back to those bad old days. I am so very sorry about your brother, OP.
it would have been no better under socialized healthcare. all insurance sucks.
Mangione for president 2028 🇺🇸👍
This is heartbreaking and infuriating, and such a depressing thing to be still battling years later. I hate to reiterate it, but it’s not just the privatization of insurance, it’s the privatization of nearly every aspect of the healthcare system, from the education to the bedside, and all the management and pharmaceutical and ancillary and “advocate” services in between. Insurance was almost incentivized to fail your brother, but so much of the system cow-tows to insurance companies and the profit model and so many people along the way are just as culpable.
It’s a cooked system, and we will never have better until we understand that capitalism does not belong in all aspects of life. It doesn’t even belong in most aspects of life. Human beings and human health are not for profit generation.
I’m truly sadden and angry by your post. I hope you find peace.
Privatized health insurance also killed my friend’s wife. She developed lung cancer from a radon leak and her insurance was denying her chemo.
Tommy Douglas (Kiefer Sutherland’s grandfather) almost lost his leg as a child. Parents didn’t have the money, and there was no private insurance coverage for the family. The doctor himself paid for the operation.
Tommy never forgot that, and as an adult lawmaker in Saskatchewan helped pass legislation for universal health care. In a short time, the provincial health care was so popular that it spread to become NHS.
And now we have a popular demand for single payer health care that is actively quashed by US legislators. Sickening. Even the argument that single payer healthcare is overall cheaper than the current private insurance system cannot persuade them to do the right thing for those they represent.
German here. Sadly, in countries with government-regulated public health insurance, stuff like this can happen too. Our doctors are always overworked, so they tend to go for the easiest explanation for your symptoms instead of checking all possibilities and doing tests.
I mean, if you get really really sick here, they’ll do whatever it takes to save your life, and you don’t have to pay anything. But as long as you’re not dying, getting a doctor’s appointment can be pretty tricky. And even after waiting 3-6 months for one, the doctor might not listen to you and just brush off any complaints because “you’re too young.”