Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 17, 2021

The insurance company knew that knee was going to trouble even before it happened.

Insurance: the only certainty we have is that they will collect our money regularly.

Pig probably wasn’t expecting such a knee-jerk reaction.

Single-payer now!

ouch

Are you ready for universal health yet?

Bleh! Too close to home!

I have some Band-Aids.

Give Me Free Stuff!!!

Never trust ACME. Even, when it’s a healthcare.

Do insurance companies REALLY look for any way they can to weasel out of paying claims-even legitimate ones??

They prefer to pay people for finding ways how to avoid paying…instead of actually paying. Weird thing is, said people are often more expensive.

They won’t pay the claim. But since you made the claim they’ll raise your premium.

Life is a pre-existing condition, and it is terminal 100% of the time. Ergo, your insurance company should never have to spend a dime on you.

It takes one with an especially malevolent mind to be an insurance adjuster, they adjust solely to their benefit only.

But Pig, if you need an anvil to fall out of the sky or rockets that you can strap on your back!

Then ACME is the company you should deal with!!

Smoked pig knees are supposed to be quite tasty.

Loopholes!

He doesn’t seem to have knees at all.

And women have wombs, so before ACA (“Obamacare”) pregnancy was called a pre-exiting condition by insurance companies : https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/how-obamacare-changed-maternity-coverage/

Pig if you had the surgery last month Mr Pastis never put it in the strip . Stephan a little more buildup next time .

That’s about it! Just remember this: If a hospital keeps you for “observation” and does not “admit” you, you’re responsible for any meds given. I was given 5 meds and got a bill for $750.00. Never again! I’ll go home first!

The allure of single payer is that you don’t have to worry about your insurance being accepted. And it’s not necessarily so that the doctor or medical facility doesn’t want to accept your insurance. Some years ago my doctor decided to open his own practice. I like my doctor. I didn’t want to have to change doctors. But while my insurance company had approved him to accept most of their insurance products they hadn’t approved him to accept my Medicare Advantage plan. He wanted to but they wouldn’t let him! So for almost a year I felt that I didn’t have a doctor. When, under Medicare rules, I was finally allowed to change my insurance company I did and I got my doctor back, but I wasn’t as happy with the coverage. And after another year my preferred insurance company finally approved him to accept their Medicare Advantage plans, so I switched back. I also dread getting a referral not knowing whether my insurance is approved/accepted by everyone involved.

Congress could easily alleviate my angst by passing a law that requires universal acceptance of insurance policies by doctors and medical facilities and universal approval of doctors and medical facilities by insurance companies.

#MedicareForAll now. There is no other moral or humane solution. Profit must absolutely be removed from the equation in healthcare if we are to have any hope of being considered a civilized country.

I thought Obama and Pelosi fixed America’s health care 12 years ago?

Got hit with this for allergies. I hadn’t been treated for them, but you’re born with allergies so it was a preexisting condition.

why do people get so serious on the COMICS page? I come here to get away from the news. :-/

What knee? LOL

What a scam.

And boom—the last twenty-one years never happened.

Two quick points: 1. Average the insured wait times in the US with the infinite wait times for the uninsured and denied cases and only then you can compare to government health care systems. 2. If you’re worried about governments being inefficient, not to worry as they have to be more inefficient than the profits of the insurance company, the profits of the hospital, and the super high wages of the doctors as none of that even exists in government run systems. Then add the social efficiencies of a healthy and safe population and single payer systems are far far ahead.

Health insurance companies have people on staff whose job is to figure out excuses to not give you what you already paid for. Would we put up with that from any other industry?

Yep, that’s how most American insurance companies operate

Let me explain the problem with US health care, it is not the insurance companies. It’s the fear of being sued. I recently went to my doctor and she said it has been a while since you had a stress test let’s do one. $5,000. Next was we think we may have seen something in the stress test so we need to do angioplasty. $22,000. The results were “it was nothing your fine”. $27,000 for them to tell me what I knew all along. Talking to a staff member the doctor had recently been sued by a family of a man that died that claimed she didn’t run test that could have caught that he was going to have a heart attack. By the way he hadn’t seen her in almost a year. So now she over compensates out of fear of being sued. We are the problem lawsuits and the fact we are paying to cover the cost of people who use ER’s like their own personal doctor.

They’ve ALWAYS got you now! THAT’S the pre-existing condition!

Pig got kneemonia.

Now I get it: When Pig faces right his right ear is down and when he faces left his left ear is down ! Brilliant !

The solution seems obvious to me, then.

Knee the insurance guy in the unmentionables.

Love my knees…and my surgeon!

Should have called AJAX instead of ACME.

Birth. The ultimate pre-existing condition. Smart Lawyer…..

On the bright side, Pig DID get an extended warranty for his car…

A couple of years ago I had to get my prosthetic leg replaced. They requested the operative report from the surgery when the amputation was done as part of the prior authorization process. I imagine they were surprised when I provided it to them, considering the surgery took place 40 years ago.

And we deemed it to be an unnecessary surgery. You could’ve just sawed your leg off and walked around on crutches…

Tell them it was a knee replacement. Checkmate, insurance!

Thankfully, one big reason the GQP can’t get rid of the ACA is the no pre existing condition that insurance companies are so fond of became illegal.

Do not have your tail straightened, under any circumstances And stay away from Oscar Meyers, they long ago even figured out a way to use your last squeal.

And this is exactly the sort of thing the Republiqans want to bring back.

Medicare for All. NOW!!!!

But hey! I can choose my own doctor!

A good reminder that the Republican Party of Trump HATES the idea of people who cannot afford it getting health care.

That’s ALWAYS their KNEE-JERK response!! … :)

Sounds like a “knee-existing” condition to me.

You being alive is a pre-existing condition but I am sure your life insurance can fix that for you.

A long time ago, I served in the US Navy, so I have VA healthcare. I don’t run into those problems.

—In which Pig learns the true nature of the insurance business (function: to make money for the company).

There is material here for a Dickensian social reform novel….

Can I make a long-standing grammar gripe? “Pre-existing” is an idiotic redundancy. “Existing” conveys all the information you need.

“An existing condition.”“A pre-existing condition.”

Can anyone seriously find any difference in the meaning of these sentences?

I thought they did away with pre-existing conditions. Call your congressman.

No frickin crap hes had it since birth