Yea yea anecdotes,if you want double blind studies and statistics go to GD.
My mom has metastasizing cancer, she is scheduled to have a 12 hour surgery and have a ostomy and urostomy installed. She was at the point she couldn’t even sit the pain was so bad, she was laying on her side to write or do anything.
Multiple oncologists and primary care doctors on a cheap HMO flat refused to RX pain meds above 800mg ibuprofen. 75year old woman with disfiguring cancer? Obvious drug seeker! Told her she would have to go to a pain management clinic, she didn’t like the bizarre requirements(random drug testing you must be at in one hour and such) and she couldn’t afford it anyway as they only accepted cash.
She got into a much more expensive plan and got into a premiere and expensive cancer treatment center(MD Anderson) and on her first initial visit without even an exam taking place without asking she was given RXs for both IR and ER morphine and told she would be moved to stronger stuff on the next visit or if those weren’t holding her to just call and come in for a stronger med.
Try being poor and getting treated in Japan.
My 18 YO brother in law broke his leg and was basically held hostage until his mother coughed of a shit-ton of money.
The hospital called and said “He had an accident. We have him, but we’re not gonna do shit to help him until we see a boatload of money.”
I suppose if you brother is a US citizen/resident who was just visiting Japan things might be different. Most countries with UHC have reciprocal agreements with one another enabling citizens of one to use the facilities of another at little or no cost, but, of course, US citizens, lacking UHC, do not get this benefit.
All the same, I am confident that your brother did not have to pay anything like as much as a foreigner (without private traveler’s insurance) would have to pay in a similar situation in the USA.
Nope.
He’s a Japanese citizen, Japanese ancestry from both mother and father, born and raised in country.
Kid sat in the hospital a week until they got the money together to set his leg.
I suppose it’s possible my wife’s family made the whole story up but when I went to see him in the hospital it was pretty clear they weren’t doing a God-damn thing to help other than keeping him alive until the check cleared.
I am sorry that you have to deal with this, but just having read your other thread about your mom I suspect that it’s not as simple as cheap insurance being the problem here.
My experience with medicine and a person with a similar personality type as you described there was that personality conflict was the source of much of the problem. A newer, more expensive medical plan may have just brought in new people not yet familiar with the person they were dealing with.
Regardless I will not argue the point that medical plans are not up to snuff, just pointing out that in this case there may be mitigating circumstances that are affecting this situation.
Good luck with all of it. I hope that you find peace soon.
Yeah, morphine is cheap. Really cheap. This probably isn’t about money.
Although it’s really no better that medical professionals are apparently punishing a patient for being a PITA by refusing to adequately treat her pain. But it’s much more common than withholding pain treatment for financial reasons.
I admit I used the phrase of a metaphor of a check to indicate they weren’t going to do anything until they got paid. There was no actual check.
This was in Tokyo. The hospital gave him basic life saving care but three days after he was injured his leg still wasn’t in a cast and when my wife asked about it she was told something along the lines of “That’s gonna be 10,000 dollars.” I remember all of the relatives pooling cash to get him help. This was 1995 or so…
I don’t speak Japanese. As I said it’s possible my wife’s entire family made the whole story up but being there and seeing the poor kid in the hospital and the doctors just shrugging their shoulders it was pretty damn clear they weren’t gonna do shit unless they got paid.
I doubt it, she is a DARLING to people like doctors and strangers,meek little mouse. She saves her nasty crap for family and loved ones(she often does not follow medical advice or instructions but they have no way of knowing).
I’m assuming it is some kind of fear of drug seeking or something, they just won’t RX narcotics.
Also my dad which used the same HMO before he died had yearly kidney stone problems and had a bladder stone removed and also had problems getting pain treatment,he got some Vicodin post surgery but never anything for the stones.
He wasn’t anything like her BTW.
I feel bad for you poor mother. When my mom was in hospital this past November, she only had Mass Health. That is a free plan for the elderly. They took superb treatment of her. I can never express how thankful and how I appreciate how much they did for her.
I work and live in Boston. There are many hospital facilities, and health clinics. I even work in a hospital. I have learned through the years, that getting good healthcare is a toss up. You never really know what to expect until you have been seen or treated.
Just two weeks ago, I literally had to argue with my PCP office. Where I go for my mammogram, requested that additional xrays be done, and they wanted the PCP office to approve the request. I am not exaggerating when I say the clinic I go to, and my PCP gave me a very hard time about this. They were actually refusing to allow them to take a few more x-rays, saying I did not need it. It was such a friggin headache. I go to a local clinic, that I believe, is the only patient they have with good health insurance. All the other patients are pretty much low income, and have their insurance paid for by the State.
So why would they not approve the x-rays? I did end up getting, and everything is fine. But I still have not an inkling of a clue as to why it was such an issue.
I am currently looking for a new PCP. I tell you, you never know what you are going to get. :smack:
That’s astoundingly hard to believe.
I was just a green-carded foreign worker but I unintentionally discovered I was 100% covered when I showed up at a clinic on a Sunday with my first bout of colitis. The native Japanese person who helped me get through the language barrier told me I was getting minimal treatment because I was a foreigner.
—G!
100% is minimal? I can appreciate minimalism in that context!
Healthcare sucks for everyone who isn’t rich here. Lots of people who went to college and got good jobs are straddled with high deductible junk insurance that makes it impossible to see a professional for anything but an emergency.
Based on the other thread about her mentioned upthread, I wonder if a fear of malpractice litigation may have been at the root of their unwillingness to prescribe anything more potent than 800 mg ibuprofen, which BTW, is surprisingly potent stuff.
It does suck. I sprained my ankle badly on Friday. We went to a recommended urgi-care center. I limped into the room practically in tears and begging for help. Unfortunately even though I had my health care card, I had forgotten my purse at home. Fuckers would NOT treat me because I did not have what they considered proper ID. So we had to run home, have my husband grab my damned purse and then spend half an hour extra running to the local ER all while I was in pain.
Fucking bastards. A decent person would have told me to fax that shit on Monday but our health care system isn’t run by decent people.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people showing up at the ER with other people’s health insurance cards. At least that was true 25 years ago when I worked one summer at a hospital billing office. IIRC, unless you had a condition that was likely to have bad consequences unless attended to immediately, they would require picture ID in addition to the insurance card. Many people would leave and not come back. Hopefully they went to another hospital.
One of my college classmates around that time had no insurance apart from the very minimal student plan. When he was in an accident (fell down an embankment) his brother came over and gave him both his BCBS card and his drivers’ license. They looked enough alike that they could pass for each other, especially to someone not too familiar with South Asians.
My experience is this: pain prescription is such a touchy subject with doctors, they are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. I see a pain specialist for issues related to smashing my foot a few years ago. the most significant medicine I receive is a patch (Butrans) which is hard to abuse and is therefore not so rigidly controlled.
For breakthrough pain I also receive some percocet. For that I must visit the doctor every month, and I am subject to random drug tests, regardless of how well they know me (and they do know me very well by now).
So I won’t argue with **grude **that his mom was mistreated; he would know better than me. I do recognize that the requirements listed for going to a pain clinic are not abnormal at all, given the pressure the federal, state and local governments are exerting on those who prescribe pain medication, and my personal experience.
If she’s a timid church mouse to them, and a manipulative witch to others, then maybe they deserve props for recognizing that she’s being inauthentic in some way? Possibly not uncommon behaviour in drug seekers.
I don’t dispute that healthcare sucks for the poor in the US. Not exactly a news flash.
But, your oft told tales insist she cannot be trusted, lies, exaggerates and manipulates. Why would you believe her on the reasons they denied her the drugs she wanted? Or how things went down anywhere ever?
My SO has terrible pain due to a severely twisted spine from spina bifida. He goes to ridiculous lengths to get 30 pills of Vicodin a month, which are a drop in the pain bucket. It sounds like his experience is pretty similar to 2gigch1’s. He’s been to a pain clinic as well, and subject to the random drug testing. It’s not fun at all.
If grude’s Mom was a PITA, I’d bet at least part of it was because she was in pain. My SO’s a very calm, kind guy, but when he’s in pain he gets so frustrated and angry. The whole situation is absolutely ridiculous. A lot of good people live in pain because a few morons abuse the medications. Fucking government.