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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 6635089" data-attributes="member: 19675">Hehe.I have a love-hate relationship with insurance companies.  Good ones- or more accurately- good policies- can be a godsend.  And of course, being improperly insured can be a nightmare.Last year, a friend of ours lost her sister-in-law to a single-car accident.  She fell asleep at the wheel  crashed, was airlifted to the hospital and didn't make it.  The family later found out that the care flight air-ambulance service was NOT covered by insurance, and cost $15k.  Apparently, most insurance companies doesn't cover that kind of service- it is usually only available directly from the service providers, for something like $50-100/year.  There are 2 companies that provide air-evac in Dallas, so that would be $100-200 per annum.Now, the odds of you NEEDING that service are slim.  But $15k is a big financial hit for most families. ESPECIALLY when the person needing the service is a breadwinner.  (For the record, our family is still debating the value of said insurance.)My main problem with InsCos comes from the games they play, both with customers and service providers.  I was reviewing a HMO or PPO contract for my Dad a few years ago- they had all the statutory language about how they would process patient claims within X period of time, etc.  However, there was NO clause stating when a claim would be paid after it was approved.  IOW, by the terms of the contract, they could process and approve the claim, and drag their heels indefinitely on actually paying him for services rendered.  I told him to sign it only if he got an express payment clause included.There's also the issue of how they interfere with actual patient care by their approval or non-approval of treatments, down to specific brands of medications.  My Mom is unusually sensitive to the additives in pharmaceuticals.  Her InsCo insisted she be switched her from a name-brand to a generic of a particular med....and she experienced side effects that made the doctors think she had Lou Gherig's disease.  It took months of fighting for her MDs to convince the InsCo that their bottom-line bean-counting was killing their patient.</blockquote>

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