I last wrote about the difficulties we are having in dealing with the health insurance companies.  I noted that Hills Physicians Medical group, was a problem, and Aetna was somewhat helpful.  Well so much for that.

I “thought” Aetna was helping because they assigned a behavioral caseworker for us.  What I didn’t know is that our behavioral caseworker specializes in suicide… not autism.  Wait… What?!  When asked about a list of doctors that provide ABA therapy for our child, she said it would take her 3 weeks to get us that list.  When questioned about the 3 weeks, she indicated that’s what the process is.  If your process is 3 weeks just to get me a list of qualified doctors, your process is seriously broken.

At this point, I feel like Aetna is doing everything in their power to delay all the eventual diagnosis (they have in the past), and now the eventual treatments.

When it comes to autism, the treatments can get very expensive, and this makes sense for a health company to be weary of doing anything, as they will undoubtedly lose money on this venture.  But what makes much less sense, is that the earlier you treat autism, the better your chances are to not require said treatment anymore, and the more likely you are to save millions (yes millions) of dollars towards the various treatments required, and instituted by the state and federal laws.

Aetna, by law, must pay for all the care my child requires.  But they are doing everything they can do avoid this.

Before moving from Canada to the United States, I said that the health care system in Canada is problematic, due to the long wait times for care, and the United States system was much better.  That was then.  That was before I had a family member with a chronic disorder, and experienced a complete lack of action from a health care insurance company, that I (and my company) pay into on a monthly basis.  If this is what I should expect from health care, there needs to be some serious re-engineering of the system.  I’m confident I will eventually get the care, but the amount of phone calls, complaining, checking, faxing, re-faxing, reminding, more phone calls, and general frustration is mind-boggling.  Why do I need to go through this, when I already have a hard enough time just coping with the fact that my child is autistic?

With that I will end this entry, with a note of inspiration: Fuck You Aetna and Hills Physicians Medical Group.

Now I’m off to getting ready for the appointments with the doctors in my local area that I found on my own, which provide ABA therapy and are part of the Aetna network.

Thanks for reading (and letting me vent).