Healthcare or lack there of

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lance
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Healthcare or lack there of

Post by lance » Mar 8th 2005, 11:24 pm

Figured I open up this thread.

My sister got food poisoning, bad. She lives in New York City. Fortunately she managed to stumble across the street to the hospital emergency room. Unfortunately for her she has no healthcare insurance, she can't afford it.

She received a $1,200 bill in the mail. She apparently got charged something like $50 for ice chips. I asked her if the water had come from some spring in Upstate New York that had been blessed by the pope.

In addition the LanceMan has not been feeling too well of late. So I have to get an MRI in a couple of weeks. With my craptacular insurance plan I am paying handsomely for, I shudder to think of the bill I will get for this one. I will let you know how big it is.

All of this has got me thinking a lot about healthcare in this country recently and where exactly priorites are. Gonna go out on limb here, might the billions of dollars being spent on Iraq have gone to, oh I don't know, healthcare?

:shock:

Shocking concept I know but there it is. So what do you guys think? If you don't mind me asking how good is your coverage? Does anybody still have a 100% medical coverage anymore?

Just curious.

-LanceMan

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Post by special_k » Mar 9th 2005, 1:00 am

I think I'll save this for my next argument with an antagonistic Republican. Had another tonight. Ah, profanity is the refuge of the witless. Of course he had to start in on deporting minorities, interning them. When he mentioned Asia I really let him have it with both barrels.

Lance, thank you for being such an inspiration...and a wonderful human being. You'll be in my thoughts and prayers, wo de ke ai peng you.

-K.
"Sometimes things happen between people that you don't really expect. And sometimes the things that are important are the ones that seem the weirdest or the most wrong, and those are the ones that change your life."

Jessie, "Once and Again"

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starbug
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Post by starbug » Mar 9th 2005, 2:42 pm

I live in a country which still believes healthcare should be free at the point of need (allegedly) thankfully. So I've never had to pay anything, except the prescription charge, which is a standard charge of around £6.50 for whatever drugs you need. If you need a longterm supply of a huge amount of drugs I'm pretty sure you get them for free. Oral contraceptives are also free on the NHS.

Free at the point of need means that it is paid for out of income tax of those of us that work. I have no idea what proportion of the tax goes to the NHS, so I couldn't tell you with any accuracy whatsoever the 'cost' of this service to me directly. I do know that our top tax band (on all money you earn over around £30k p.a) is 40% but I don't think overall, brits pay any more of their wealth into the government pot than US citizens. In fact I think it's maybe less.

I'm forever thankful for the service. I know that my relatives in the USA who have been sick have been hit hard in the pocket. My grandfather was in an IC unit for 10 days before he died, and it wiped out my grandmother's savings when the bill came. She had something called Blue Shield, Blue Cross, something like that... anyway it cost her around $10k for that time he spent in hospital, and again when she was in a trainwreck it involved a big battle with the train company to get them to pay her medical bills.

My mother had breast cancer when I was 16, so we really needed the NHS. She had diagnosis and full treatment, and nobody presented us will a horrendous bill. I can't imagine how it must feel if you recover from a serious illness only to be presented with a bill at the end of it.

I read an interesting article lambasting the NHS in a paper over here, and it basically said that the NHS is useless, the quality of healthcare in the USA is way better (it illustrated cancer survival rates in the USA/UK respectively). At the end it posed the question: would you rather be dead in britain or bankrupt in America?
I think the article was a little ridiculous because it was so negative without focussing on the fundamentally good thing that healthcare is meted out without regard to people's ability to pay.

I recall that a friend who works in hospital said that she sees alot of Americans who have had some kind of accident while over here travelling, and have to be stitched up, drugged up, etc. They always ask how they should pay.... and can't believe it when they're told that we don't charge people. Even if they don't live in the UK. If they need help in A&E, they get it. Of course I doubt the same is true for non-emergency care.

Sorry....that turned into a bit of an essay.

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Post by Nothingman » Mar 9th 2005, 4:32 pm

A couple months ago my co-pay went from 20% to 40% because my employer wanted to save more money when the cost of insurance increased this year. The worst part about seeing the doctor isn't the cost for me, it the inconveniece of leaving work to go do it. I suppose I just need to make the time. I miss the days when I was a kid and the doctor could always cure me. Chicken Pox, Flu, Strep Throught, Hives, they could always fix me up. Now I go in for a cough and they don't have an answer for me, they just try different things that don't seem to work.
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Post by SanDeE* » Mar 9th 2005, 6:08 pm

I have one prescription that costs me $25 a month (that's my co-pay). I am still on my parents' insurance, since I am under 25 (or 24? not sure of the cut-off). I really have no idea what I will do when I am of age to get my own insurance, as I am a musician and will probably be in school for a while longer yet. My mother wants me to have Lasik eye surgery in 2006, so I won't have to worry about paying for my own contacts, etc. when I am not on her insurance anymore. I'm not sure if insurance covers Lasik surgery.
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lance
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Post by lance » Mar 11th 2005, 10:30 pm

Kristin wrote:I have one prescription that costs me $25 a month (that's my co-pay). I am still on my parents' insurance, since I am under 25 (or 24? not sure of the cut-off). I really have no idea what I will do when I am of age to get my own insurance, as I am a musician and will probably be in school for a while longer yet. My mother wants me to have Lasik eye surgery in 2006, so I won't have to worry about paying for my own contacts, etc. when I am not on her insurance anymore. I'm not sure if insurance covers Lasik surgery.
I have heard that the cut off is 25 but they may have changed since I was 25.

:D

When I was in Cincy and I worked for the library (basically a county job) I paid $30.00 for 2 prescriptions. Under the plan I have now I pay $89.22 for the same prescriptions.

I remember 4 or 5 years ago I was calling up my insurance (Blue Cross I believe) trying to get verification of coverage for my upcoming surgery. I was literally on the phone, on hold for 3 hours. When I finally got served the very first thing the woman told me was that Blue Cross reserves the right to change the physical laws of the universe at anytime without prior notification, could she help me?

:shock:

I asked her given that preamble if indeed she could help me or anyone else for that matter.

-LanceMan

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Post by emmie » Mar 12th 2005, 12:24 am

when I seriously sprained my ankle last august, it was a huge deal. I ended up going to two different county hospitals to get x-rays. both said that my ankle wasn't broken, but now I wonder. my ankle is still screwed up and if I could afford to go to a special ankle/bone doctor I would. but I'm sure one visit would cost twice my rent.

my mom, on the other hand, is disabled and has blue cross/blue shield. I guess it is different depending on your employer, but my dad must have a great deal because she doesn't have to pay anything for her expensive drugs/treatments/surgeries each year. but I'm assuming she is a rare case. what's laughable though, is that she receives $525 in disability a month. who the hell could live off of that? especially if you were sick? she is seriously lucky that my dad has such a good plan.

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Post by lance » Mar 15th 2005, 1:27 am

Today on NPR's Day to Day program they announced that currently 4 million children in the US are without health insurance. The show went on to say that they get their primary health care from their school nurse, often waiting to have broken bones set or ruptured appendixes (sorry if bad spelling here) attended to.

-LanceMan

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Post by lance » Mar 17th 2005, 2:08 am

Another bit on the news...

According to NPR's morning edition (3/16/05) the National Guard Association reports that 15% of the National Guard do not have medical insurance and that 7% (nearly 15,000) are declared medical unfit for duty when they are called up for deployment. Often citied is a lack of adequate dental care for Guard members.

Also according to the NPR's Day to Day...

1 out of 4 Mississippians are on Medicaid. This means like or not the US is developing some kind of National healthcare. Might not be good healthcare and it seems that states are struggling to pay for their Medicaid recipients.

Instead of focusing on Social Security that might have problems in 2042 perhaps, just maybe the focus might be on Medicaid on how to pay for it.

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Post by stburr91 » Aug 20th 2006, 11:53 am

The Democrats have promised a national health care plan or health care reform in 92,96,2000 and 2004. Surely Hillary Clinton will promise one in 08. I wonder how many years they are going to run on that platform?

I'm not a Republican, so I'm not just putting down the rats here, but a national health care plan, is a pipe dream. Don't get me wrong, our health care system in this country is in need of major reform, and I would love to see it.

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lance
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Post by lance » Sep 13th 2006, 9:15 pm

stburr91 wrote:The Democrats have promised a national health care plan or health care reform in 92,96,2000 and 2004. Surely Hillary Clinton will promise one in 08. I wonder how many years they are going to run on that platform?

I'm not a Republican, so I'm not just putting down the rats here, but a national health care plan, is a pipe dream. Don't get me wrong, our health care system in this country is in need of major reform, and I would love to see it.
Seems to work for other countries.

Here if there is a dollar to be made, it will be made no matter who has to go without medication or services.

-back in 1970 people thought the Soviet Union would never fall, it did

-100 years many thought black people would never get the vote in the South, they did.

National Health care may be a pipe dream to some, now, but that doesn't mean it will be forever.

-LanceMan

P.S. I had healthcare coverage through last may and payed $200 a month and yet every, EVERY GP visit I had was rejected as "Pre-Existing Condition". Healthcare is the 800 pound gorilla in the room no one wants to deal with. Eventually we will have to, one way or another.

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