Family had big surgery, had excellent insurance, went to rehab, something went wrong and his bones started coming apart and he reported agonizing pain and popping sounds in his reconstructed bones, and they ignored him and told him it was normal. By the time they realized it was a real issue, his whole anatomy was falling apart and he had to have multiple surgeries all the way across the state to fix it, traveling back and forth while not in great shape, and still isn’t okay and probably will not be again. I got in a shouting match with one of the nurses that tried to tell me it was basically his fault.

Other family member had major abdominal surgery, they sent her home after and only after she collapsed at home and came back did they realize that nothing they’d done the first time had actually addressed what was causing the problem. They did surgery again, this time fixing the actual issue, and then sent her to rehab for a few days and then back home before she could walk again. If I or someone hadn’t been around to help her out she probably would have starved to death or something.

Friend had a fairly minor health condition, had insurance, went to the doctor, insurance refused to pay the claim for basically no reason, wound up with bill collectors chasing her for thousands of dollars after she had paid out-of-pocket to have health insurance. Lawyer said there’s not much to do that wouldn’t cost more than they wanted to extract from her. Sorry.

I went to the doctor evading the whole system, just said that I had something wrong with me and wanted it checked by a specialist without waiting six months for a referral and wanted to pay for the visit. They said fine and quoted a price, I said fine. A lab sent me a separate bill for the lab work which the office hadn’t told me about, I called the office to ask about it, they said lol good luck.

There really is no way out, other than not to have health issues.