The mother of an Arizona man who died after being unable to find mental health treatment is suing his health insurer, saying it broke the law by publishing false information that misled its customers.
Ravi Coutinho, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, bought insurance from Ambetter, the most popular plan on HealthCare.gov, because it seemed to offer plenty of mental health and addiction treatment options near his home in Phoenix. But after struggling for months in early 2023 to find in-network care covered by his plan, he wasn’t able to find a therapist. In May 2023, after 21 calls with the insurer without getting the treatment he sought, he was found dead in his apartment. His death was ruled an accident, likely due to complications from excessive drinking.
Coutinho was the subject of a September 2024 investigation by ProPublica that showed how he was trapped in what’s commonly known as a “ghost network.” Many of the mental health providers that Ambetter listed as accepting its insurance were not actually able to see him. ProPublica’s investigation also revealed how customer service representatives and care managers repeatedly failed to connect Coutinho to the care he needed after he and his mother asked for help. The story was part of a yearlong series, “America’s Mental Barrier,” that investigated the ways insurers employed practices that interfered with their customers’ ability to access mental health care.
shareholders and board members in corporations that do this nonsense need to be criminally charged and given appropriate sentences. corps want “rights” like humans and shareholders want corps to put profit first? then they can all be treated like the motherfucking criminals they are.
yes. i mean ALL shareholders. all it’ll take is once and the whole system will change when grandma goes to jail because her 401k has stock in this criminal entity.
I’d be fine with the compromise that your sentence should be proportional to your level of stake in the company. So, grandma’s .00001 shares would get her community service, while the 51% holder gets life.
completely agree.
I agree. But I wonder: if the law isn’t able or willing to help, what recourse is there? What is to be done?
protest and running for office?
I owe my psychiatrists office thousands, because none of my employer provided insurance options has ever covered it. The best “coverage” I had was up to 10 therapist visits per year. No coverage of the medical visits, and when I needed therapy every other week, they did not cover any of it. I’m lucky that they have not cut me off. And if they do cut me off, I’m properly fucked. I can’t go off of my meds, I just can’t function properly without them. I’d quickly end up in a very serious situation.
Free Luigi!
He did his bit. One luigi per ceo, not one luigi for all the ceos
I don’t care how many Luigis it takes, as long as we get all of the CEOs, and free all of the Luigis.
Don’t forget, there is basically no oversight on therapists, so if your therapist tells you you should quit your job to “submit” to your husband, then disappears after a week or so of torture, meaning that you navigate a divorce with zero access to domestic violence supports, your life is over and there is no consequences!
There is a lot of oversight on therapists, every state has a regulatory board. We have to go through thousands of client hours before getting our license, which can get revoked if we do anything illegal or unethical. Maybe you’re thinking of life coaches?
Not in the south.
What state doesn’t have a regulatory board?
Regulatory boards can exist but only choose to meet a few times a year, refuse to investigate anything that happens to a certain class of people, and also just not want to do their jobs because social services and regulatory agencies are like weekend clubs here.
Things are not working to the point I am trying to whistleblow a decades long “industrially scamming the free school lunch funds” and no one gives a shit. No one gives a shit about anything, Jesus Christ it’s Oklahoma. There are no consequences for anything here.
Joke’s on you, I use BetterHelp
Seems like this is a state by state issue. I didn’t have this issue on Medicaid or paid for insurance (not marketplace).
