Brit teacher in Cambodia told by docs to cough up £20k or lose his infected lung

[Burma Bill]

2 hours ago, Ketyo said:

They are a bunch of cowboys.

For reference. CIGNA is an American company with HQ in Connecticut. If they were based in Texas, this statement would be appropriate!!!

[zyphodb]

23 hours ago, Sheryl said:

It is not exactly a branch. It is a "sister hospital", joint venture between some Cambodian tycoons and Bangkok Hospital.

 

Unfortunately due to COVID restrictions travel to either Thailand or Viet Nam is not possible. Otherwise would be a good idea and could be done by land ambulance.

 

However if he requires expensive medication even Thailand or VN would be costly. We don't know the nature of the lung infection but if it is TB, a full course of TB treatment is expensive and even more so if it is a drug resistant variant.

 

The talk of otherwise removing part or all of a lung is suggestive of TB.

But if he's a 30 odd year old brit surely he had a BCG vaccination at school in Britain, are they not 100% effective then?

[Sheryl]

19 hours ago, Burma Bill said:

For reference. CIGNA is an American company with HQ in Connecticut. If they were based in Texas, this statement would be appropriate!!!

Cigna International is a  UK company.

[Sheryl]

19 hours ago, zyphodb said:

But if he's a 30 odd year old brit surely he had a BCG vaccination at school in Britain, are they not 100% effective then?

No they are not. But it appears from later reports that he has meliodosis not TB.

[Sheryl]

22 hours ago, Ketyo said:

There is a lesson here for all.

 

Do not use CIGNA health insurance. They are a bunch of cowboys.

 

They are double the price of many alternatives and claim to be a Rolls Royce insurance company.

 

But they only pay out around 50% of the time. Some other health insurance companies pay out 95%. There are loads of complaints online about them not paying out.

 

They have an internal rule book with many detailed rules to help them deny payment and they will not share those rules with the customer.

 

They have a very aggressive sales team and incredibly poor claims management team. And they are dishonest about what they have done or not done. 

 

I used them one year and had 2 completely separate claims that were genuine and covered according to my policy. But they said they had found some internal rules to deny the claims.

 

There is a famous story of a guy who needed a liver transplant but they denied the claim because they said the treatment was not accepted by some medical group in the USA. The guy died.

Cigna US and Cigna International are quite different.

 

Cigna Intetnational, which is a UK baded compsny offering expatriate policies, has a solid reputation. Many membets of this forum have had huge hospital bills paid in full by them.

 

But neither they nor any other company will pay for an illness that began before the policy was purchased. 

[steven100]

On 5/26/2020 at 4:06 PM, Kerryd said:

Oh look in the comments on that story. In the "Update" she doesn't say anything about "pay up or we remove the lung". Apparently she said exactly that on the GoFundMe page as well and then edited it to remove that bit.

Seems she decided to "soften" her story and switch the blame from the hospital to the Insurance company (looks like she doesn't want to upset the wrong people).

Still sounds like a load of BS to me. He hasn't posted anything on his FB page since April of last year. She doesn't post much herself, including nothing at all between the end of Oct and the 1st of March.

just goes to show .....   don't believe any of the stories written and published on the internet until actual proof to verify the story can be provided.

The world is full of cheats & lair's 

[Burma Bill]

31 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

Cigna International is a  UK company.

Sorry, I based my post on this:-

 

Cigna is an American worldwide health services organization based in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Its insurance subsidiaries are major providers of medical, dental, disability, life and accident insurance and related products and services, the majority of which are offered through employers and other groups. Wikipedia