On what planet do you spend most of your time?

[primroseburrows]

Yeah, this is about me. But it's also about most Americans.


So day before yesterday I go to a cardiologist, because with my family history it seemed like a good idea to me and my neurologist. So I drive all the way down to Westerly, and the cardiologist (who is also my mom's cardiologist) says that except for a teeny bit wonky EKG that he and my primary doc both think is not a problem, everything looks good. He was, however, worried about my family history (mom's had a bypass, pacemaker, stent; her mother died from a heart attack, my paternal grandmother died of congestive heart failure, paternal grandfather of a heart attack, etc., etc.).

So he orders a nuclear stress test, to get a baseline and to catch anything he might have missed. And he says if my insurance company won't cover the nuclear version, he'd give me a lesser test that they would cover. Which was fine with me, and I made my appointment for next week. Well. I go to pay and to check about which test my insurance will cover, and, whoops. My insurance won't cover any test at all. I don't quite understand why I was officially refused, but apparently it was something like I wasn't sick enough. The test costs three thousand dollars without insurance.

Now. My insurance used to be Healthmate Coast-to-Coast, but Care New England apparently had a spat with Blue Cross about what patients they'd cover, and threw them out and got us Tufts, whose plans suck. Well. It seems that they've kissed and made up, because as of Jan. 1, I can have Healthmate again. The problem is, now I have to wait until January to find out if my DNA is turning on any switches in my body. And if Healthmate doesn't cover it, I may have to wait until I'm symptomatic before any tests are done.

The next day I went to a rally.

Here's a message for the Obama is Che Guevarra AND Hitler reincarnated crowd: When you're lying about American healthcare reform, DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT WAIT TIMES, ASSHATS.

Comments

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I keep wanting to slap those people. I mean seriously, the fear-mongering over things that they hypothesize are going to happen (for which there is no real evidence), compared to things that are actually happening to real people right now, that are so much worse? I sincerely hope some of those protesters get to experience the bad side of the system we have now. I don't know how else you get people to take their damn blinders off.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

(for which there is no real evidence)

Dude. There's the opposite of evidence. Every country in the world that has some kind of national healthcare system (which is so far away from what Obama's plan is about that there's really no comparison) is doing just fine, thank you. It's not that their healthcare systems don't have their problems, sure they do. It's just that their systems are so far superior to ours, the problems don't matter, relatively speaking.

[vsee.livejournal.com]

This is not in the same league as having to argue for your right to basic cardiac care, or anything, but the last time I got the crud, it took them 5 weeks to decide to see me and prescribe antibiotics, and then I could only get an appointment with a physicians assistant. By that time, I had such raging sinus and ear infections, it took three expensive courses of synthetic antibiotics to kick it.

This is with relatively decent health insurance, and a regular doctor in a private clinic.

[loveneverfails.livejournal.com]

What I don't get is why we can't raise the income limits for Medicaid and let people buy into that as an already existing program. Couldn't that help a lot of people really quickly?

I'm normally conservative, but everyone should be able to agree that health care is a mess and people are hurting because of it. I don't know exactly what the fix is, but I have a friend going bankrupt over cancer treatments and they *have* insurance!

Truthfully, I think big pharma is probably as bad or worse than insurance companies.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

They pretty much have just substituted their imaginings for what's really going on. According to them, if you have a wait time you must just be a lazy person who has no job. Don't ask me how that works.

But good luck with the test!

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

And the thing is, I'm employed with health insurance.

A guy on the moveon council I'm part of told a story about how his late wife was thrown out of the hospital by United Health after two days post extensive ovarian cancer surgery that her doctor had told her would require several days hospital recovery time. He recalled hearing his wife's doc on the phone literally yelling in frustration at the insurance company. She had absolutely no say in the matter. And he said that this was with "excellent" insurance through United Health, except for the small matter of how they decided to tell doctors how to practise medicine.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's not just about the uninsured, although that's a giant part of it. The woman at the cardiologist's office said sure, they'd pay for it if I had a heart attack in the meantime (which would be a whole lot more than three grand), but not something that could prevent one. She was pretty pissed at them, too.

I'm apparently healthy, so waiting isn't likely to make me sick, but this isn't a doc ordering a test for no reason--I've got a giant family history of heart disease. Maybe insurance companies should first go after all those OBs ordering Caesarean sections for women who don't need them (which, yeah, is another rant entirely).

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Truthfully, I think big pharma is probably as bad or worse than insurance companies.

They're horrible. IMO, they're legal drug dealers, and they don't care about the health of their customers any more than insurance companies do. They advertise prescription drugs on television like they're Kool-Aid, which IMO is a travesty.

Part of why drugs are so expensive in the US is that we don't have the price regulations that other countries do that keep costs down (it's also the reason why Big Pharma wants to make it illegal to buy prescription drugs from Canada--they're cheaper there because of price regulations we don't have). Now, apparently, the White House has made a deal with the Devil, which as much as I like the President and realise how desperately we need healthcare reform, makes me furious. It's like, I dunno, protection money or something.

[vsee.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course they should be doing preventative care. That was the original argument for HMOs in the first place. And yet, I can't get get a doctor who has time to schedule regular physicals for me, nor can I get insurance to pay for basic preventative care like teeth cleaning or eye exams. And they certainly should be concentrating on preventative actions like the cardiology tests. In my case last year, they preferred to wait till more expensive and extensive drugs were needed, when about $7 worth of amoxicillin could have saved the day.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

And they certainly should be concentrating on preventative actions like the cardiology tests.

One of the reasons my mother has the health problems she does is because she wasn't diagnosed until after she became symptomatic, which by that time coronary artery disease is often pretty well established. I'm trying to get preventative care so that kind of thing won't happen to me. It doesn't seem too much to ask from a wealthy corporation, y'know?

they preferred to wait till more expensive and extensive drugs were needed, when about $7 worth of amoxicillin could have saved the day.

Yeah. It's like they're biting off their own foot, or something.

[vsee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the story like your mom's is just what I was thinking of. I am sorry you're having to deal with this.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

In my mom's case it was more that she was unaware of any problems and didn't ping to the family history thing (this was back before a lot was done with heredity and stuff). In my case, it's entirely preventable, and if anything does happen it'll be because of not being able to get the treatment I need to prevent it. Unfortunately, the end product could be the same.

I really think I'm pretty healthy, but y'know? I'd really like to stay that way.

[http://users.livejournal.com/___closetome/]

but I have a friend going bankrupt over cancer treatments and they *have* insurance!

You're apparently a sane conservative who has common sense and can apply logic.
Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, there aren't nearly enough of conservatives like you.