I recent months, I’ve become more and more galvanized in my support for comprehensive healthcare reform in the United States. Since it’s been all over the news and blogs on the intertubes, I’ve been been immersing myself in the political discussions and the relevant statistics.
The more I learn, the more disgusted I become. Like the 45,000 people who die annually due to inadequate health insurance., either unaffordable or too expensive. Or the approximately 800,000 people who file bankruptcy every year due to medical bills, 75% of whom had health insurance. Or the health insurance company CEOs totally oblivious to these statistics from their stratospheric-compensation-laden throne. Or representatives of the private insurance companies admitting that they save billions of dollars through rescission. Or the CEOs of these companies flat-out refusingto end the practice of rescission. Or the fact that our healthcare costs over 17% of our GDP, which is far less than in most other first-world nations. That’s one sixth of our GDP somehow wrapped up in sick people. Or that this cost is expected to double in just over a decade. Or the fact that the US ranks behind many other first-world nations in healthcare rankings despite this higher level of spending.
So to the people against reforming this system I have only this to say: you make me sick. And I mean that literally. I consider myself a fairly stoic individual, one who doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve. But I get physically queasy when I read this absolutely deplorable litany of factoids and statistics. I don’t understand how you can sleep at night.
I’ve decided that I have a problem on a very fundamental level with a system that makes money at the expense of the health and well-being of our fellow citizens.
I’ve been wondering this (along with some other things) for several months now. But I also wonder if non-profit medical centers would be as “cutting-edge” as the for-profit ones.
I wish we could scrap the whole thing and start over with a more sensible system.
Wait. Are you talking about the health insurance industry?
I also have a problem with the health insurance racket; ever since my insurance company denied a claim for my emergency appendectomy; and after I went through an exhaustive effort to get one of my kids insured (kid is still uninsured). A pox on all of 'em.
Nothing wrong NinetyWt, IMHO, with some private medical centers for those that can afford it where the cutting edge stuff is developed, so long as it trickles down, and the rest of us are getting a reasonable standard of care.
Here’s my contribution to your disgust: if you come into my ER on a saturday night with a bad tooth and say ‘I have a dental appt on monday, but I just can’t wait that long,’ and my Dr gives you a script for antibiotics and vicodin your bill is 900$ If they also give you a dental block, just like the dentist does before they drill (except we use a longer acting variant) your bill for this procedure raises your total to 4400$. That’s just for the hospital, you’ll get another one from the docs. Now if you have medicare or blueshield or whatever, this is negotiated to some fraction thereof, and some say that’s why the bill has gotten so high, but is you don’t have insurance you’re shit outta luck. Our hosp used to give private pays the same price break as insured, but they stopped that.
OTOH, I heard Obama say that medicare bargaining was successful in keeping prices down, BUT they reimburse locally based on a rural cost of living schedule that is so manifestly out of date that we have trouble attracting new docs to our area, even though it’s such a sweet place to live, because they know they won’t get payed shit here.
Now that you have had this epiphany, have you contacted your Congressperson and Senators? Nothing will change unless your representatives hear an unambiguous demand for universal healthcare from their constituents.
I don’t know how to tell you this but… this exact same situation cost me a grand total of 17 euros last Feb., and IIRC social security only covered ~50% in this particular case, so the total bill must have been around 40-50 euros, so 60 bucks tops. And that’s for a 3AM visit, mind you - night rates.
Seriously, 900 bucks for a routine trip to the ER ? What in the everloving name of fuck ? What do patients get for that price, handjobs in the waiting room ? Champagne sponge baths ? How the hell did medical rates get *this *bonkers in the US ? Is it the downside of malpractice suits left and right, something like that ?
It’s this EXACT situation for my wife as well. I took her in to the ER last weekend because her antibiotic/pain med combo wasn’t working fast enough, the infection was spreading, and her dentist was closed over the weekend. We were in the ER for three hours on a non busy Saturday afternoon and we have insurance.
I can’t wait to see how little insurance is going to cover. Every day I come home expecting to see a $1000+ bill. I don’t think I’ll be disappointed much longer.
In the US, ERs are not just used for emergencies. People who don’t have health insurance often use the county hospital ER as a general practitioner. No, I’m not kidding. Some parent who doesn’t have health insurance takes her kid, who has an earache, to the ER. The kid will eventually be seen and given an antibiotic, and the cost will be absorbed by the hospital. If we had a universal payer system, then the kid could have been seen by a pediatrician or general practicioner at a fraction of the cost. However, this kid has fallen through the cracks of the system, for whatever reason, and doesn’t have health insurance, so the hospital has to write off the charges…and that means that everyone else has to pay a higher cost. Had Mother taken Junior to a doctor during regular office hours, she would have had to pay upwards of a hundred bucks or so for a routine visit, I believe. This does not include the cost of medication, nor does it cover the cost of an extended visit.
The US health care system is very, very broken. Yes, you can get excellent care in the US, if you have good insurance and/or a fat bank account. You can get whatever you need, and most of what you want. Look at Michael Jackson. He got just about whatever medical treatment he wanted, whether it was in his best interest or not, because he could pay for it. If you don’t have health insurance or money, though, you’re out of luck if you need medical care.
Some people say that a single-payer system would result in rationing of health care. The truth of the matter is that we ALREADY ration health care, based on the ability to pay.
Yes, yes, I know all that. I mean I knew all that. But I knew all that in a conceptual sense, you know ? The numbers just made it painfully concrete to me, is all. And it makes me all the more incredulous that you guys don’t unanimously take to the streets with torches and pitchforks.
Screw partisan bickering and econo-philosophical theories : this is nuts.
You know, in my state (individual states administer Social Security even though it’s a federal program) it takes five to six months from the time a person applies for Social Security disability benefits to get a ruling on whether they’ll get them. And that ruling appears always to be NO. It’s pretty much a given in everyone’s mind that the state routinely disallows all initial applications for SS disability benefits, paltry though they may be. I’ve never heard of anyone who knows anyone who’s on SS disabilty benefits who didn’t have to hire a lawyer in order to get them, and I’ve never known anyone myself who was receiving SS disability benefits who didn’t have to hire a lawyer first. I was discussing this with my dentist one day and he told me of a patient of his, a middle-age woman who’d had a stroke and was completely paralyzed on the left side of her body, and she had just been turned down for SS disabilty benefits. The justification (as it apparently always is with virtually anyone who files a claim in this state) on the part of the beaurocrats running the program was the claim that she was still capable of doing some kind of work. Hell, by that standard quadraplegics could do some kind of work – after all breathing tubes exist that would allow them to perform such tasks as typing, communication, etc.
I think it is outrageous that it takes nearly a year to get through the application and appeal process (lawyers aren’t allowed to enter on the claimant’s behalf until the application and appeal process have been completed); that people who are clearly disabled are routinely denied benefits in the apparent hope that they will just let the matter drop; that the excuse given is that the claimant is still capable of some kind of work, despite the fact that the claimant may be totally unemployable from the standpoint of finding someone who will actually hire them; and that a lawyer and a further six month-to-one-year wait is necessary in order to finally collect benefits, a large portion of which then has to be paid to the lawyer. And after all that, the recipient generally gets no more than a $1,000 to $1,400 a month.
And people wonder why I’m against government health care.
There is no question in my mind that if 45,000 people are dying each year in this country due to a lack of health care coverage, a great many more than that will die each year as the result of ridiculously long waits; uncaring beaurocratic efforts to cut costs; and lack of adequate funding. There is simply no way that even 100% government-paid health care is going to be able to finance health care for everyone, and the “death panels” that everyone around here love to make fun of will indeed exist, albeit in the form of individual and/or departmental decree rather than a small group of people sitting at a table issuing decrees that this or that person must die, which is what the term ‘death panels’ brings to mind.
Wait - your argument now is that public health care is flawed because the government is so damn careful and thrify with their spending?
I may be wrong, but I assume your political leanings make you leery of increasing the funding of the social security departments that you mention in your post. And conservatives in general then push to reduce the funding. And then you use the flaws of an underfunded system to point out the downfall of potential public healthcare? Seem to be playing both sides there.
Gawd, Starving Artist, Death Panels exist right now. When an insurance drops your coverage or refuses to cover, they are making (potentially) a life/death decision about your worthiness as a human.
Do gov’t run death panels scare you more than insurance company run death panels? At least in the “Public Option” decisions wouldn’t be made based on shareholder profitablity.
Many of the arguments against the “Public Option”/gov’t run HC exist already in the real world. Rationing, death panels already exist. I have no idea why the anti-UHC folks cannot see that.
My dad’s took about 6 weeks. Of course, he already had 10 years of complete medical records already copied and ready to send them right off the bat so that information didn’t have to be requested, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, and buried in soft peat for 3 months before being recycled as firelighters.
My last trip to the ER cost $10k. I sat in a crowded hallway on a hospital gurney for 8 hours, had an MRI done and was sent home when the results were inconclusive.
The guarantee is that if you have health insurance you like now, it will be trimmed and cost more in the near future. All you have to do is look at the past decade and the future of health care is obvious. It will continue to go up, up, up in cost. Companies will buy less and less coverage.
Insurance companies deny about 21 percent of the claims. That means more cost for the sick person. When you are most vulnerable and in the greatest jeopardy, when you are scared and worried about serious health problems, you have to face a fight with your insurance carrier. What a horrible system. Unless you are an insurance carrier .