Health Care Reform

We have a long ways to go. Last evening our friends came with bad news. Cancer had reoccured in the husband and the option for treatment they wished to have had been denied by their insurance company.
A month has been wasted in this dispute. I thought this was supposed to be illegal.

They are both health care workers.

What a nightmare!

2/27/2011


Alice...


How do you like my new sexy avatar ? Jo Ellen loves it.
I think your friends should take them to court, sounds like an
Illegal act to me..


Cheers..Joe

Joe,


I don't like it--I like you. Take it away--please!!!!!!

So long as there are various treatment strategies, insurance companies will choosethe least costly. The new health care bill is not perfect; remember, it's a compromise: losses for gains. Your friends are fortunate to have insurance. Imagine what life is like for the uninsured. Some pieces of the health care reform don't kick in immediately. I don't know which pieces start when.

Just now they are feeling quite down on their luck. The husband had stage 4 colon cancer.

He went through surgery, chemo, radiation and thought he was home free.
Then it came back.
Conventional surgery will compromise his quality of life.
Insurance claims robotic surgery to be experimental, but they they have been doing it fior years.
Today they are having a hearing. I hope they win their case and he can have the treatment soon.

Debating or denying the cost to save a human life is so sad to hear.
If you have money, you are allowed to live. If you are poor, we will add to your misfortune. Aren't we a great country with freedom and justice for all?

It is terrible.

Insurance companies have been given the power to run the health care system. My friend was a sociologist at a call center for a health care provider. Those seeking mental health called her. Her instructions were to immediately turn down a specific percentage of authorizations because "they will give up." She had "turn down quotas" and received a bonus for all she saved the company by refusing care. She lasted three months. She couldn't sleep at night.

Insurance companies make decisions that cost lives every day. However, there is the ethical debate about how much money should be spent to save a life - the old risk analysis model. How much safety does a car need to meet the risk analysis? What tolerances of error are "allowable risks?"

Recently, changing health care changed my health care plan for a specific matter. My previous doctor was insistent on blood tests specific to the meds. My current doctor said, "We don't need those tests; just let me know if you have symptoms." If I have symptoms, it's too late.

Robotic vs. conventional surgery still depends on the physician and the location. My friend was given the option: robotic or conventional. Robotic had a shorter recovery; conventional was more likely to reveal any hidden cancers. She chose robotic. Did she make the right choice.

It's very complicated!!!

I just finished sending an email to a friend who is dying of cancer.
Trying to provide encouragement is not easy when all appears hopeless. All the would haves or should haves are meaningless.

The words of the song, "My Way" begins with: And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. My friend, I'll say it clear, I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full, I've traveled each and ev'ry highway, And more, much more than this, I did it my way..."

To live a life that's full, one needs to be in good health. Many are worried each day about what would happen if...they got sick. Health Care Reform can remove many worries. Sometimes worry itself creates health problems.

I fully believe with all my heart that this would be a better nation if all its citizens, children, adults and elderly, had access to health care from birth to death. Dental work alone makes a difference in lifetime health. Lessons in proper nutrition come from annual physician visits. Major problems would be solved at an earlier stage so the long term costs would be less.

The very fact that insurance companies run our health care system and so many people are without any health care at all is a travesty, a crime, damning so many to a lifetime of ills that they would not need to face, impoverishment in later years from the cost of medical care.

Yes, it's complex. Well, let's get the complex out of it. For attorneys and unscrupulous insurance companies and even physicians to gain from others' miseries is also criminal.

But big money is so accustomed to fooling the U.S. citizens into believing it is their right to suffer that we will likely continue. It is our freedom of choice for those with access to deny those without.

They even convince us that we have illnesses that require frequent visits, expensive drugs, and unnecessary services. When progressive lawmakers suggested that these practices needed regulation, they were accused of cutting back on "necessary" health procedures.

Ann

Quote :

I fully believe with all my heart that this would be a better nation if all its citizens, children, adults and elderly, had access to health care from birth to death. Dental work alone makes a difference in lifetime health. Lessons in proper nutrition come from annual physician visits. Major problems would be solved at an earlier stage so the long term costs would be less.

Sure. We'd also be a better nation if all citizens had access to good food, good housing, good schools, good jobs, two-parent families, etc., etc., from birth to death. You can't legislate all that and you can't endlessly tax the productive citizens to pay for the mistakes, missteps and laziness of the unproductive ones. Plus the destitute from other countries pumped in by the boatload by the Catholic Church and government agencies, and the tens of millions of illegals. Politicians pushing agendas (e.g., Reid, Pelosi) can only lie for so long. I have no doubt if they were able to require us all to live in small apartments with equal everything to make it all "fair" they'd do it. They'd maintain fancy townhomes for themselves, of course.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/health-care-law-to-cost-states-118-billion-republican-report-says-20110301

Didn't they try that once in Russia?

Sometimes, I know that my belief is correct. I won't bother to debate. I repeat, the lack of universal health and dental care in this country is a travesty, an injustice, a sign of an elitist mentality by those who have their needs met (including the politicians). It takes a person of vision to see beyond their own bias and recognize that we are not separate from our fellow man. We are one nation, sharing the same resources and with similar hopes and aspirations. It takes health to reach those aspirations. Costs can be debated all day. It is a necessary cost. Period. Necessary.

Whatever they do in other countries is just fine for their needs. We know what needs to be done in our country. We need to do it. Period. We're not so ignorant that we cannot figure out that the health of a nation is dependent on its population. Once that premise is clearly understood and bias, elitism and prejudice stripped away, we have left human suffering that needs fixing. Period. We don't need a perfect system; one will never exist. We need those great minds that fight against universal health care to drop their greed and their scare tactics and use their intelligence to fix the road blocks. It's easier, however, to stop progress than to be creative and innovative. Visionaries are always crucified one way or another.

Most people not on private insurance here DO have healthcare, via Medicaid or Medicare. The ones who don't generally aren't entitled to it. It is not my problem that someone who jumped the fence is afraid to seek care for fear of being deported. I don't want to provide them with care; I don't consider it a necessary cost. I want their care to be commensurate with the standards of the country they came from if they can't pay for it themselves. I also don't want to provide the able-bodied with care, either medical or food or housing. It incentives laziness.

If you're not elderly or disabled, you have no reason to receive public aid for years on end.

Good post DK.

The friends of whom I spoke jumped no fence. They are both employed health care professionals. They are in total shock that this could happen.

If it happens to them--it could happen to anyone. Scary thought!