If there was a good egg in the Un-covered world, it would be law professor Jackie Fox, who takes on patients’ insurance battles for fun – and wins.
Kaiser Health News’ podcast “An Arm and A Leg” profiles Fox, who uses her legal and contract expertise to help patients fight back against unfair denials and other restrictions.
Spoiler alert, Fox is a legal maverick, with more than 30 years of experience. In the episode, she calls securities law “fun.” (If you say so, Fox!) After her own (successful) run-in with an insurance company, she started helping others find holes in insurance contracts.
Fox set up a small practice to help individuals appeal their insurance denials. Then, she moved on to working with bigger groups, like government agencies and advocacy organizations.
After all her work, her assessment of insurers became pretty clear: “A lot of people think that insurance companies are in the business of getting people healthy. I have never thought that.”
We don’t disagree.
Fox goes on to say that insurers are amoral, and so common consumer approaches – like begging or pointing out patient harms – aren’t effective. In other words, if you want to fight an insurer, you have to fight like an insurer.
So, what about those of us who aren’t experts in contract law? We’re not exactly happy that, for millions of people, the best they can hope for is that a benevolent lawyer with a little free time on their hands decides to help them get the care they need.
But until the powers that be – the states, Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice, we’ll take anyone at this point – decide to prioritize patient protection on a systemic level, folks like Fox are the best we have.
We’re immensely grateful for individuals doing this kind of work. We just hope one day, they won’t have to.
This story got us in our “feels,” and we can’t wait for the next Un-covered hero of the month! Have an individual or a business in mind? Send us an email at info@uncovered.health.
