Company Of Luigied CEO Has Been Fucking Over Autistic Kids

No, really, tell me more about how I should feel bad about him dying.

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So, again, not really jazzed about going back to this well but this story hit a personal nerve for me, as you will shortly see. I have to say, before, I had zero sympathy for the dead CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Now? Luigi is my fucking hero and if that sounds ghoulish to you, you do not have a child with autism so keep your fucking judgment to yourself, thank you very much.

If you’re not familiar with my son Jordan, he’s tall, adorable, and very autistic. There were some really early warning signs that we didn’t know to look for. Like, for instance, he could not tolerate bath water that was a different temperature from the room. The room could be cool or warm, the water had to be the same or he would scream bloody murder. He had sensory issues, you see, and the temperature change was extremely unpleasant.

When Jordan still wasn’t speaking by 14 months, we brought him to the doctor to see what was going on. he was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD), which is kind of a placeholder for autism because Jordan was too young for a proper diagnosis. By 18 months, though, he was officially diagnosed with autism.

Now, we lived in New York City and for all of its faults, NYC does not fuck around when it comes to young kids with disabilities. Their Early Intervention program, remember that name “Early Intervention,” is top-notch. They threw EVERYTHING at Jordan: Speech therapy, physical therapy (gross motor coordination), occupational therapy (fine motor coordination), and something called, and this was the biggie, applied behavior analysis (ABA).

Jordan’s autism, among other things, crippled his ability to express himself. As in, the only thing he could do was cry. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t gesture, he couldn’t even point to something he wanted because his autism did not allow him to make that abstract connection. With ABA, Jordan learned how to point and start expressing his needs. He spent five days a week, four hours a day working with a specialist. It took months to make any progress. But he did, a lot of extremely critical progress.

Here’s the thing, a week’s worth of service at age two is worth months of service at age 6. Age 12? A year if you’re lucky. 18? Literally years of work are required to make the same kind of progress. Auties like Jordan get set in a routine and it gets very hard to get them out of it. If you miss that window of opportunity when they’re young? That’s gone, not quite forever, but almost.

This is not a secret. This is not specialized knowledge contained only to the autism community and medical field. This is known to literally anyone who interacts with autism in any way, shape, or form. It is absolutely known to the insurance industry and the people who work in it. Early intervention services are critical to the development of autistic children. Early intervention works.

Naturally, the fucksticks at UnitedHealthcare are stealing it away so they can pocket the money. ProPublica was working on this story before UHC’s CEO got Luigied:

The insurer that has been paying for her son’s therapy, UnitedHealthcare, has begun — to the befuddlement of his clinical team — denying him the hours they say he requires to maintain his progress. Inside the insurance conglomerate, the nation’s largest and most profitable, the slashing of care to children like Benji does have a reason, though it has little to do with their needs. It is part of a secret internal cost-cutting campaign that targets a growing financial burden for the company: the treatment of thousands of children with autism across the country.

ProPublica has obtained what is effectively the company’s strategic playbook, developed by Optum, the division that manages mental health benefits for United. In internal reports, the company acknowledges that the therapy, called applied behavior analysis, is the “evidence-based gold standard treatment for those with medically necessary needs.” But the company’s costs have climbed as the number of children diagnosed with autism has ballooned; experts say greater awareness and improved screening have contributed to a fourfold increase in the past two decades — from 1 in 150 to 1 in 36.

So Optum is “pursuing market-specific action plans” to limit children’s access to the treatment, the reports said.

Got that? UHC knows that these kids need this therapy. They know they have no medical justification for denying it. They’re doing it explicitly to increase their profits.

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They’re doing this by dropping providers and denying new ones from joining their network. How many people will that hurt?

The company has calculated that, in some states, this reduction could impact more than two-fifths of its ABA therapy provider groups in network and up to 19% of its patients in therapy.

But wait, it gets soooo much fucking worse:

So Optum — whose parent company, UnitedHealth Group, earned $22 billion in net profits last year — is “heavily investing” in its plan to save millions by limiting access to such care.

A company that earns billions is setting out to destroy the lives of the most vulnerable among us to save what, for them, amounts to…pocket change? Un-fucking-believable. The greed. The callousness. The disregard for human life and the suffering they’re putting these families through. These are not normal human beings with functional moral compasses. They’re a cancer destroying everything around them as they mindlessly consume without end.

Seriously, the legacy press can’t figure out why so many of us thought it was funny as hell that their CEO had his policy canceled? Really? Is it STILL a goddamn mystery you dipshits?!

How slimy are these rat fucks? When contacted about how they’re fucking over autistic children, they hid behind the cold, dead body of their unlamented CEO:

United and Optum declined a request ProPublica made more than a month ago for an on-the-record interview about their coverage of behavioral health care. They have not answered questions emailed 11 days ago, citing the Dec. 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO as the reason. In an email, a spokesperson said “we are in mourning” and could not engage with a “non-urgent story during this incredibly difficult moment in time.” Offered an additional day or two, the company would not agree to a deadline for comment.

“Non-urgent?” Says who, you piece of shit? Not-urgent for you? Sure! You’re not paying which means you get a nice fat bonus at the end of the year for vomiting denials all over desperate families. It’s pretty fucking urgent for the kids you’re throwing under the bus, though.

Every week they go without service is time they cannot get back. It’s not just that they don’t make progress, they immediately start to lose the hard-fought progress they’ve already made. Such is the cruelty of autism at that age. But, you know, it’s “non-urgent.” Take your fucking time. It’s only the rest of these kids’ lives you're throwing away for profit.

Benji, who is now 10, requires 33 hours of weekly therapy to be able to progress, his therapists have concluded. They have documented the consequences of having even a few hours less: toppled furniture, scratched-up classroom aides, a kid in unremitting tears, unable to learn. But in a letter to Menard, Optum said it was refusing to pay for the full hours, stating that her son had been in therapy for too long and was not showing enough progress to ultimately graduate from it.

“Your child still has a lot of difficulty with all autism-related needs,” Optum wrote. “Your child still needs help, but it does not appear that your child will improve enough to end ABA.”

Jordan improved enough to finish with ABA but he’s 16 and still goes to speech therapy. He’ll never really be finished although someday he’ll stop going. Jordan is lucky. He’s “only” moderately impacted by autism. His behavioral issues are mild in comparison to many autistic kids. He’s low-to-mid functioning but only requires light supervision. He’ll never be able to live on his own but does not require constant care.

That is not the case for hundreds of thousands of autistic kids and I promise you, UHC is not the only insurance company fucking them over for a profit. When there’s money to be made, human lives mean nothing to these people. That, more than anything else, is why so many of us got a warm glow of satisfaction when Luigi pulled that trigger. They have thrown so many of our lives away, it was nice to see at least one of them pay the price for it.

If you still find that reprehensible, go explain it to the parents of all the kids UHC is actively hurting for money. I’m sure you’ll find a sympathetic ear. Good luck with that.

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