Health Care - From the Trenches

[One Eyed Cat]

Hospitalization 5 nights plus test - 30,000
Gall Bladder surgery - 300,000

This would be the bill of my partner in crime. Luckily, we managed to get her on insurance. The last month has been incredibly difficult just seeing someone I care in pain (and not being able to change it) Catastrophic illness is life changing in many ways. Luckily, she will be ok.

I cannot imagine what folks without insurance/money have to deal with in cases of catastrophic illness.It is redundant to say, but the health care system is out of control. I don't believe in socialized medicine, but there should at least be easier access to catastrophic coverage. We have the cash and access to insurance, this would destroy anyone who did not. Something has to change.

OEC

[Anarkey]

man thats a bummer,,
if i didnt have the help i get thur the V.A. here id be screwed till i was blue.
and i tell all my freinds if ya get a job ,any more the #! 1 THING is health bennies .
even with it there high cost and out of pocket that suxz all your money ,but havin none is the very worst that a person can go thur .
hope it all works out ,and ya they need more than the qwik fix ,and make it so if its some thing like that ,that peeps can get the medical help they need .

A

[One Eyed Cat]

man thats a bummer,,
if i didnt have the help i get thur the V.A. here id be screwed till i was blue.
and i tell all my freinds if ya get a job ,any more the #! 1 THING is health bennies .
even with it there high cost and out of pocket that suxz all your money ,but havin none is the very worst that a person can go thur .
hope it all works out ,and ya they need more than the qwik fix ,and make it so if its some thing like that ,that peeps can get the medical help they need .

A

We were lucky in that she qualified for a health insurance plan. We had the cash to pay the out of pocket expenses. What is scary is that many people do not. Seriously, one major illness will put a lot of people under. This is wrong.

OEC

[sheramil]

I cannot imagine what folks without insurance/money have to deal with in cases of catastrophic illness.

oh, i can. in general, they die in the street.

[One Eyed Cat]

oh, i can. in general, they die in the street.

That they do. In a literal sense, that they do.

There was a famous boxing match in 1962 between Emile Griffith and Benny "The Kid" Paret.

This was Norman Mailer's take on it:

Paret was a Cuban, a proud club fighter who had become welterweight champion because of his unusual ability to take a punch. His style of fighting was to take three punches to the head in order to give back two. At the end of ten rounds, he would still be bouncing, his opponent would have a headache. But in the last two years, over the fifteen-round fights, he had started to take some bad maulings.

This fight had its turns. Griffith won most of the early rounds, but Paret knocked Griffith down in the sixth. Griffith had trouble getting up, but made it, came alive and was dominating Paret again before the round was over. Then Paret began to wilt. In the middle of the eighth round, after a clubbing punch had turned his back to Griffith, Paret walked three disgusted steps away, showing his hindquarters. For a champion, he took much too long to turn back around. It was the first hint of weakness Paret had ever shown, and it must have inspired a particular shame, because he fought the rest of the fight as if he were seeking to demonstrate that he could take more punishment than any man alive. In the twelfth, Griffith caught him. Paret got trapped in a corner. Trying to duck away, his left arm and his head became tangled on the wrong side of the top rope. Griffith was in like a cat ready to rip the life out of a huge boxed rat. He hit him eighteen right hands in a row, an act which took perhaps three or four seconds, Griffith making a pent-up whimpering sound all the while he attacked, the right hand whipping like a piston rod which has broken through the crankcase, or like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin. I was sitting in the second row of that corner—they were not ten feet away from me, and like everybody else, I was hypnotized. I had never seen one man hit another so hard and so many times. Over the referee’s face came a look of woe as if some spasm had passed its way through him, and then he leaped on Griffith to pull him away. It was the act of a brave man. Griffith was uncontrollable. His trainer leaped into the ring, his manager, his cut man, there were four people holding Griffith, but he was off on an orgy, he had left the Garden, he was back on a hoodlum’s street. If he had been able to break loose from his handlers and the referee, he would have jumped Paret to the floor and whaled on him there.

And Paret? Paret died on his feet. As he took those eighteen punches something happened to everyone who was in psychic range of the event. Some part of his death reached out to us. One felt it hover in the air. He was still standing in the ropes, trapped as he had been before, he gave some little half-smile of regret, as if he were saying, “I didn’t know I was going to die just yet,” and then, his head leaning back but still erect, his death came to breathe about him. He began to pass away. As he passed, so his limbs descended beneath him, and he sank slowly to the floor. He went down more slowly than any fighter had ever gone down, he went down like a large ship which turns on end and slides second by second into its grave. As he went down, the sound of Griffith’s punches echoed in the mind like a heavy ax in the distance chopping into a wet log.

I've watched the fight a few times. Paret's smile is what sticks in your mind. He is completely resigned to his fate. I believe that is what those people go through. Complete annihilation and then the death of hope. For them, it comes over the course of months or years. It must be horrific.

OEC

[sheramil]

it's not just the US. i have a close friend who, despairing of getting any psychiatric treament out of the gummint, threw herself in front of a truck.

she survived. they took her to the local hospital, gave her two valium and sent her home.

[killerkat]

this is about as relavent as it can ghet for me...

in constant pain...need kidney surgery real bad(for stupidly advance kidney reflux)

and finally got insurence....


problem is...they wont fucking do shit....fonally pay for that shit....and look what i get...


same thing happened when i was a child...even with insurence...i remember my mom alwasy bitching about the 20grand she owed on a 1month hospital stay (i had steven's johnsons diesese or something like that),it was a large part why were were so damn poor growing up.



fuck all that shit

[One Eyed Cat]

this is about as relavent as it can ghet for me...

in constant pain...need kidney surgery real bad(for stupidly advance kidney reflux)

and finally got insurence....


problem is...they wont fucking do shit....fonally pay for that shit....and look what i get...


same thing happened when i was a child...even with insurence...i remember my mom alwasy bitching about the 20grand she owed on a 1month hospital stay (i had steven's johnsons diesese or something like that),it was a large part why were were so damn poor growing up.



fuck all that shit

Why won't the insurance pay for it? Can't say I blame you for having that outlook.

OEC

[killerkat]

it will....but the doctors are pretty much saying i'm not in pain....

and each one says something different about how the symtoms don't match up...blah...fucking blah...


went to a urologist today....same fucking thing...

[One Eyed Cat]

it will....but the doctors are pretty much saying i'm not in pain....

and each one says something different about how the symtoms don't match up...blah...fucking blah...


went to a urologist today....same fucking thing...

Damn. I just watched someone go thru the same thing for a month. She even knew what was wrong. I'm beginning to wonder about about the competence level even.

Oec

[skully]

i just read this big article about outsourcing medical procedures. going to hospitols in singapore. hospitols that are staffed by american trained doctors in brand new facilities for fractions of the cost... and american insurance companies are starting to offer plans based around it...

saying it would be cheaper to send you to singapore for open heart surgery with three weeks of hands on recovery in a hospitol that more closely resembled a hotel stay... for less then 6,000 dollars. you couldn't finish the pre-surgery screening for 6g's

this is becoming an option for companies to save money on insurance premiums. also for self-employed and start-up companies. you still see your regular doctors for normal stuff but the big bucks catastropic stuff you get sent over (assuming it is not an absolute must do right this second stuff)

AGAIN all this considering it is Qualified doctors who have real world experience and latest technology and training not some third world quacks.

so if i ever decide to quit my day job and start my own business i know what i will be looking into for health insurance

[grebo]

i love australia, we have government subsidized healthcare, it takes a while to get an appointment but it costs you nothing, and if your unemployed it costs nothing at the right doctor

[One Eyed Cat]

i just read this big article about outsourcing medical procedures. going to hospitols in singapore. hospitols that are staffed by american trained doctors in brand new facilities for fractions of the cost... and american insurance companies are starting to offer plans based around it...

saying it would be cheaper to send you to singapore for open heart surgery with three weeks of hands on recovery in a hospitol that more closely resembled a hotel stay... for less then 6,000 dollars. you couldn't finish the pre-surgery screening for 6g's

this is becoming an option for companies to save money on insurance premiums. also for self-employed and start-up companies. you still see your regular doctors for normal stuff but the big bucks catastropic stuff you get sent over (assuming it is not an absolute must do right this second stuff)

AGAIN all this considering it is Qualified doctors who have real world experience and latest technology and training not some third world quacks.

so if i ever decide to quit my day job and start my own business i know what i will be looking into for health insurance

Sounds like a plan (as long as the hospitals are decent) I've heard of people going overseas for medical procedures, I was not aware some are being insured now.

OEC