State of US Health Care on ABC This Week

[Rgirl]

Yazmeen,
I'm so glad you contributed a doctor's perception on all this. Having worked in various aspects of healthcare for many years, I know what you mean about the general "I want it yesterday" attitude and I think it's been one of the problems keeping the US from moving forward with a universal health insurance plan. Unfortunately, at least IMO, the people who know how really desperate the healthcare/insurance situation is tend to be either healthcare workers, patients with chronic conditions, or families of one, the other, or both. Whenever I ran into patients who would throw those, "I want my test results this very second!" tantrums, I'd just want to say, "You obviously have no idea what waiting is." Once in a doctor's waiting room (this was NYC) a guy rushed in, up to the receptionist and practically shouted, "I HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT MEETING ACROSS TOWN IN HALF AN HOUR! I NEED TO SEE DR. X FOR ACUPUNCTURE RIGHT NOW!" and then he just charged back to Dr. X's office--and Dr. X took him! The rest of us in the waiting room just looked at each other.

I think too many people think, "I've got good health insurance now. Even if the costs are going up, better to stay with what you know is good." Unfortunately, it's virtually impossible to communicate to people who have a job and who are healthy that it can all go like that and also that, contrary to most people's underlying assumptions, there really truly is no safety net for the middle class. And to qualify for Medicaid you must have an extremely low income and virtually no assets, other than your own residence and a car.

Anyway, the awful thing is that both caregivers and patients are getting in deeper and deeper, yet these groups are so often at odds. And there are those relatively small percentages of patients, physicians, researchers, drug companies, etc. who do take advantage of the system yet those few get an inordinant amount of attention. Once people start talking about it, obviously it's a very emotional issue. I'm only 47 and I'm not sure this issue will be satisfactorally resolved in my lifetime.
Rgirl

 

[show 42]

This is indeed a very timely thread. My mother-in-law is in the hospital again. She's in her 80's, has parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis, congestive heart failure, and needs open-heart surgery, but her poor health prevents this from happeneing. She takes 21 pills a day, and her prescription insurance is maxed out until Jan. 1st. Most of her meds are in excess of three hundred dollars a bottle, so she's paying out of pocket. Her income is eleven hundred dollars per month, and her outgo (mostly rent and medical) is sixteen hundred per month. Her HMO just informed her that starting in Jan., her hospital stay co-pay will jump from zero to 200 dollars per day.........she just can't afford to be ill any longer................42

 

[Piel]

(((((Show and M.I.L)))))) You are in my prayers. No one should have to go through this. We are the richest damn country in the world. Billions of dollars are spent on purely frivolous and entertaining things (sorry folks, this includes F.S. too). How we allow our fellow citizens to be treated speaks volumes about our society as a whole. I have no clue as far as an answer to this mess. But it saddens me to see people who helped to make this country what it is, worked hard and thought that they were living the American dream to be stripped of everything they worked for all for reasons they have no control over. We treat prison inmates better than we treat the chronically ill...THEY get their medications every day not to mention a free trip to the infirmary every time they get a minor skin infection from trying to tattoo themselves with their eating utensils and and ink pens.

STILL mad as hell.... but don't know what to do about it,
Piel

 

[Rgirl]

Oh Granny, I know what you mean. What gets me is that since I was injured in 1981 have seen gosh I don't know how many doctors and none have ever questioned my complications relation to the broken knee. Deep vein thrombosis is very common after this type of injury (Tara is a spokesperson for this I think). My boss was right beside me when I fell so I didn't have to deal with my employer contesting the injury. A lot of people do have to so I'm lucky there. A friend of mine who works at comp told me that the new doctor was "a prostitute" whoever he works for he will report whatever they want . My biggest help is going to come from my doctor who has to convince the appeal board that the complications are related to the originali njury. English is not his first language and although he is an excellent doctor his world is the O.R.. He hates dealing with the paperwork and all that IS practicing medicine now and communicates poorly. So I am more than a little anxious about the outcome of this. Of course stressmakes my vasculitis worse. No stress here LOL.

Piel,
Thank you for contributing information on your personal experiences. In case anyone doubts what you say or would rather not hear it, while I was working in health care one of my bosses was good friends with the guy who was second in command of the NY State Workers' Comp Board. At a conference we were talking to one of the physicians who testified for the state in workers' comp cases, so I heard this with my own ears. This doctor said, "I always say the defendant is malingering. If he has a good lawyer, I'll fold on cross examination." And he was not the only doctor I know who did this. Of course there are many doctors who do their best to make sure patients get treated fairly, but they don't get paid nearly what the state pays its physicians and how many people do you know who will last long in a job if they testify against their employer?

Also most people don't want to believe that trying to resolve workers' comp or health insurance problems can go on 20 years and more. Such things just don't seem comprehensible when most of us have been brought up to believe that the US has the best healthcare system in the world, that life is fair if you're a good person, and that the US is a meritocracy. Also, chronic complicated illness is something that is beyond the comprehension of most people. Even if they've seen it in their family, I think there's a tendency to feel, "Well, that was the quota for me and my loved ones." Of course it's only natural to feel this way, even when presented with evidence to the contrary. These are things we just don't want to think about since most of us have responsibilities and problems enough.

Still I think that by sharing experiences, which by no means is intended to put pressure on anyone, the immediacy, reality, and enormity of the problem is brought to the fore. People also understandably get frustrated thinking, "I know health insurance is an enormous problem, but what can I do?" I think one important thing is to think in terms of family and friends, community, city, state, nation. If you can find local groups working for changes in US health insurance policies, then you can do whatever is within your abilities, even if it's just getting educated about different candidates' platforms and voting.

One example of how a relatively small group can make big changes is the gay community and AIDS. For example, in NYC, the safest disease you can get in terms of retaining your job, your apartment, your assets, and your health insurance is AIDS. If you get cancer and cannot work, you can be fired and if you can't pay your rent, lost your apartment. But if you get AIDS, you are protected by law from such things. Why? Because the gay community organized and did everything from getting their candidates into office to marching on Washington, DC to doing massive fundraising to literally kicking and screaming until people paid attention. There were/are several unique features of HIV/AIDS and the gay community that made such organization described above possible. For one thing, people who become HIV positive usually have a period of anywhere from months to decades where even with no treatment they feel fine. This allowed people with HIV to put their full energy into fighting for their lives, which they knew for sure were at risk. Most illnesses don't work this way. You go to the doctor because you don't feel well and you find out sooner or later, usually, what's wrong, but all your energy has to go into trying to recover, if that's possible, or just trying to get through each day if recovery isn't possible.

But back to organization and AIDS. Another factor IMO is that the gay community had already started to fight for its civil rights in the late '60s and by the late '70s, many gay rights organizations were already in place. So the infrastructure to mount local, state, and national campaigns regarding HIV/AIDS was already there. The gay community also had strength in their shared experiences being discriminated against, which likely made it easier to put aside individual differences to work toward a common goal.

When it comes to health care and health insurance, it's much more difficult to get people organized. As I've already said, people get frustrated by the enormity of it and by the time people lose their insurance or get seriously ill without insurance, it's too late. So it's not like people with HIV, who were looking down the barrel of a gun, as it were. Thinking, much less doing something, about health insurance is something most people can put off and being human, if we can put off something unpleasant, we will.

But if you knew that your government was torturing family and friends on a completely random basis, you'd do whatever you could to stop it, right? That's how I think of the situation with the US and health insurance. Completely by random, some people suffer physical, emotional, and psychological pain, plus lose virtually all their financial assets and stability because of the US health insurance policies. I think that people like Piel, Grgranny, and others who feel comfortable sharing their stories help link an abstract crisis to people we know, albeit via the Internet.

For information about universal health insurance coverage, here are some links:
http://www.stateaction.org/issues/healthcare/uhi/index.cfm
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=program&ProgID=17
http://www.policyalmanac.org/health/universal_health.shtml
http://www.kucinich.us/issues/issue_universalhealth.htm
http://reason.com/rb/rb080603.shtml
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/7/reich-r.html

One of the above (kucinich.us) is the website of a guy running for President, but I included it because I think his plan for providing universal health insurance by expanding medicare is at least an example of one possible approach. I'm not supporting the guy nor am I trying to promote any particular solution to the problem. I'm just trying to provide sources of information and invite others to post any links they might have as well.
Rgirl