posted on June 23, 2008 08:51:54 PM new
I am so #$@%^& mad at the reluctance of the medical community to provide adequate care for the elderly because their profit margins for (even supplemented) Medicare/Mediaid patients is less than with younger insured patients.
My parents have always received excellent medical care, they were well-insured, they were close friends with the physicians who treated them, they had a brother-in-law and nephew/nieces doctors to offer over the shoulder consulting and second opinions. My Dad was employed by the hospital and was a favorite among patients and doctors.
Now that my Dad has passed and their physician friends have died or retired, my Mom has been relegated to the unprofitable patient category. She has a history of longevity in her family - her mother and uncle lived past 100 years. She's had to fight for her carpel tunnel surgeries to restore functioning of her hands. She had a bout with rectal cancer a few years back which she survived quite well, after surgery and no chemo therapy. Her primary physician stopped scheduling routine tests (PAP, etc.) for her. She had to fight to get these done. She was advised to get a colonoscopy done every 3 years after her surgery (now they recommend after 3 months), she requested it a year ago was poo-pooed and told they would do it 2 years later.
Bleeding profusely in her bag, forced a colonoscopy today which revealed a huge polyp, probably cancerous. Her surgeon has informed her she will be reassigned to a more vigilant primary care physician.
My mother blames herself for not being more adamant. I blame the clinic, the system.
I'm totally in favor for medical care for all but fear that it will be corrupted by two levels of care, those that the government partially pays for, and those covered by private insurance.
posted on June 24, 2008 05:58:50 PM new
Pixi: I'm sorry to hear about your mother. This is a story I hear over and over again, here in our little town. We have many retirees, and we're all fighting to be respected by the system.
I guess what we can hope for, if medical care reform gets off the ground in the next year or so, is our ability to get to our representatives and demand a one-tier system.
_____________________
The problem with health care in this country can't be blamed on immigrants as your video suggests.
Like immigrants, most of the forty seven million Americans without health insurance have essential jobs that do not pay enough to cover medical care or insurance.
The current health care system is inadequate because it is focused on profits for the insurance industry whose business is denying health care in order to maximize profits.
posted on July 18, 2008 05:31:04 PM new
Yes Helen, but only illegal immigrants without health care go to the emergency room. You'd never catch uninsured real Americans doing that, no. When they need medical care, they go, um...somewhere else where it doesn't cost the rest of us or the hospitals any money.
posted on July 19, 2008 05:35:06 AM new
Of course uninsured Americans use the emergency room. In fact it's the only affordable source of health care for millions of uninsured Americans.
Any human being with two feet on the ground should be treated with the same empathy, fairness and equality that all people in this country deserve. That responsibility is basic.
posted on July 19, 2008 12:13:40 PM new
Typical ridiculous responses. Whether something creates" a problem is immaterial to the level of imbecility that it even exists at all.
posted on July 19, 2008 01:24:25 PM new
desquirrel, you write, "Typical ridiculous responses. Whether something creates" a problem is immaterial to the level of imbecility that it even exists at all."
Can you try to clarify that statement? When you use the words "something" and "it", what are you referring to?
If you could possibly relax your need to insult, you might be able to write a comprehensible sentence.
posted on July 20, 2008 09:02:37 PM new
I don't think it is my problem. Your answer to the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on health care for illegals was, poor citizens get care also.
posted on July 21, 2008 05:28:09 AM new
Squirrel, your video was clearly an effort to demonstrate that those people who seek economic refuge here are bankrupting our medical care industry. My answer to that is that we should have a health care system in this country that can accomodate everyone.
I object to calling people without documented papers illegal. Employers who outsource millions of jobs and employers who use people from foreign countries to work below minimum wage deserve the categorization of "illegal" more than someone with the guts and ambition to seek the American Dream.
Our country is founded on the idea that people deserve equal and fair treatment. Surely you believe that everyone here deserves equal access to health care. I blame the Democrats and the Republicans for the fact that this basic right is not available to everyone right now.
Knowing your remarks recently on the topic I suspect that your ambiguous sentence was intended to blame the health care crisis on the number of foreign people using emergency facilities without consideration of the MILLIONS of Americans having to use emergency care as their only sourse of medical attention also.
Maybe with the amount of focus on the problem now the next administration headed by Barack Obama will be able to make some headway toward a system that will eventually provide universal health care for everyone.
