Should you find yourself on the cusp of death in these
United States, be afraid. Be very
afraid.
Okay, so we’re all afraid on the cusp of death, so how about
this: Should you find yourself sick for
any reason in these United States, be afraid.
Be very afraid.
I live close to the finest medical institutions on this
planet, and I have arguably the best insurance company covering my care, so my
care should be top-notch and should not end up bankrupting me, right?
Well, it was a different insurance company covering me when
I did have to go bankrupt due to losing my job because I was ill—yes, I know that’s illegal, but you just try to
fight it and see how useful that in—in my case, I gave up after one of three
appeals because I was so darned sick, so exhausted, and my mind and abilities
to do paperwork were not up to the task, and so I let it go.
Let it go.
Let everything go.
Because when you’re sick in the United States today, that’s
likely what you’ll have to do.
The issues abound, and I intend to take each one on in
future episodes, but for today I’ll focus on what I believe to be the
underlying problem, the fundamental issue escalating costs and reducing coverage.
If you, Dear Viewer, are one of the lucky Americans who actually has health insurance, don't be smug, patting yourself on your back because you've got an employer paying your premiums because you are working, unlike the freeloading 47 percent (the elderly, the sick, the poor) who are shoving their grubby hands into your pockets!
No, instead your employer is paying, and perhaps you are paying, as I am, for so-called excellent health insurance--Out of my take-home pay of around $2,300 per month, I get to pay $200 for my prescription coverage and another fifty or so for health, and some more for dental, let alone the other benefits my employer "gives" me. Yes, I'm working. I've worked my whole life. But I'm in heart failure and don't know how much longer I will be able to work.
I can't support a society that doesn't make provisions for the poor, sick, and old among us. Fortunately, enough of us still care here in the States that we still have those provisions, though thanks to Rand Paul and his ilk those benefits will be cut. (But the rich won't have to pay taxes anywhere at the rate you and I do, or even put a little more than they now do into the public coffer, again thanks to the latest favorite puppet of the mega rich.)
But we can sympathize, can't we, America? [Don't empathize, of course; in the last Administration we learned that empathy is a bad word valued only by the weak. By those lights, Jesus was a 90-pound weakling.]
Anyway, we can sympathize: The owners of our megaconglomerates have to pay astronomical salaries to their CEOs and other top management; they have to pay themselves, of course, enough for their mansions in seven or twelve spectacular locations; they must hire the best and the brightest to consider paying the multi-million-and-often-billion-dollars salaries, plus the bonuses probably close to their yearly salaries--but, to them, the "best and the brightest" are those most capable of setting aside ethics to figure out how to get blood out of a turnip. What do ya think, fellow turnips? Do you really think any one of them deserves that much money while the rest of us are struggling?
Of course, the whole incestuous process guarantees that competence is not necessarily a criteria for incomes such as these--which corporation was it that fired its latest hire after a few months. The guy couldn't be too upset as he floated softly into a pile of cushy wealth on his golden parachute.
So, before I go on a rant (too late?), let me give you a few examples of my recent forays in the subterranean (because it's not above-board; it's a netherworld you enter only if you become sick, an invisible subculture not unlike that crazy Wonderland Alice fell into, where logic didn't exist, a place where one could shrink to the size of a mouse (I'll have to re-read it, ha--have no idea exactly how small she got) or as big as a giraffe in a cave.
I'm negotiating labyrinth of health care in the United States today, and it not only makes me think of Alice's disturbing adventures in Wonderland--the maze grows scarier as does the bizarre experience of turning oneself over to the care of strangers. In a couple of cases--one of which happens to be a heck of a story, so I'll have to do an episode on that! Teaser: moped accident, shredded calf, trip to the torture chamber of Frankenstein himself at our local emergency department.
But that's another episode. Today, I want to vent just a bit about the sudden reversal of coverage by the insurance company I've had for the past four years. I did not change the type of policy--POS--point of service--but suddenly "point of service" had a more ominous ring to it. The point of service will be at a location the insurance corporation designates and no other, even if the patient is ill and tired, having driven 3 hours and getting lost yet again in Baltimore, and said patient has no fucking idea where a LabCorp might be, nor did she feel up to locating yet another health care facility, parking in yet another nearly full parking garage, the stress of negotiating the streets to find yet another facility whose location she wasn't entirely clear on ... well, you get my drift.
So, here are the latest absurdities. Actually, not the latest, but ones that are illustrative of the monopoly on our health by persons (Yes, even though Congress legislated that corporations have the same rights and benefits that human beings in our country do, the mega rich consist of persons, of human beings, of flesh and blood the same as you and me. I'm not sure I appreciate their hoarding all of our society's cash.
Oh, my, Mary Dell, get to the point!
No, instead your employer is paying, and perhaps you are paying, as I am, for so-called excellent health insurance--Out of my take-home pay of around $2,300 per month, I get to pay $200 for my prescription coverage and another fifty or so for health, and some more for dental, let alone the other benefits my employer "gives" me. Yes, I'm working. I've worked my whole life. But I'm in heart failure and don't know how much longer I will be able to work.
I can't support a society that doesn't make provisions for the poor, sick, and old among us. Fortunately, enough of us still care here in the States that we still have those provisions, though thanks to Rand Paul and his ilk those benefits will be cut. (But the rich won't have to pay taxes anywhere at the rate you and I do, or even put a little more than they now do into the public coffer, again thanks to the latest favorite puppet of the mega rich.)
But we can sympathize, can't we, America? [Don't empathize, of course; in the last Administration we learned that empathy is a bad word valued only by the weak. By those lights, Jesus was a 90-pound weakling.]
Anyway, we can sympathize: The owners of our megaconglomerates have to pay astronomical salaries to their CEOs and other top management; they have to pay themselves, of course, enough for their mansions in seven or twelve spectacular locations; they must hire the best and the brightest to consider paying the multi-million-and-often-billion-dollars salaries, plus the bonuses probably close to their yearly salaries--but, to them, the "best and the brightest" are those most capable of setting aside ethics to figure out how to get blood out of a turnip. What do ya think, fellow turnips? Do you really think any one of them deserves that much money while the rest of us are struggling?
Of course, the whole incestuous process guarantees that competence is not necessarily a criteria for incomes such as these--which corporation was it that fired its latest hire after a few months. The guy couldn't be too upset as he floated softly into a pile of cushy wealth on his golden parachute.
So, before I go on a rant (too late?), let me give you a few examples of my recent forays in the subterranean (because it's not above-board; it's a netherworld you enter only if you become sick, an invisible subculture not unlike that crazy Wonderland Alice fell into, where logic didn't exist, a place where one could shrink to the size of a mouse (I'll have to re-read it, ha--have no idea exactly how small she got) or as big as a giraffe in a cave.
I'm negotiating labyrinth of health care in the United States today, and it not only makes me think of Alice's disturbing adventures in Wonderland--the maze grows scarier as does the bizarre experience of turning oneself over to the care of strangers. In a couple of cases--one of which happens to be a heck of a story, so I'll have to do an episode on that! Teaser: moped accident, shredded calf, trip to the torture chamber of Frankenstein himself at our local emergency department.
But that's another episode. Today, I want to vent just a bit about the sudden reversal of coverage by the insurance company I've had for the past four years. I did not change the type of policy--POS--point of service--but suddenly "point of service" had a more ominous ring to it. The point of service will be at a location the insurance corporation designates and no other, even if the patient is ill and tired, having driven 3 hours and getting lost yet again in Baltimore, and said patient has no fucking idea where a LabCorp might be, nor did she feel up to locating yet another health care facility, parking in yet another nearly full parking garage, the stress of negotiating the streets to find yet another facility whose location she wasn't entirely clear on ... well, you get my drift.
So, here are the latest absurdities. Actually, not the latest, but ones that are illustrative of the monopoly on our health by persons (Yes, even though Congress legislated that corporations have the same rights and benefits that human beings in our country do, the mega rich consist of persons, of human beings, of flesh and blood the same as you and me. I'm not sure I appreciate their hoarding all of our society's cash.
Oh, my, Mary Dell, get to the point!
1) After going to
Johns Hopkins for many years to see specialists, and having not changed my
insurance company or its type of service, and after having my bills paid at
Hopkins by that very policy from that very company at in in-network rate,
suddenly ol’ Hopkins was OUT OF NETWORK.
2) On the same day I
learned that Hopkins was no longer in network, I also found out that the CT
scan my rheumatologist had just ordered could not be done because the insurance company had denied it. What? I'd had several CT scans at Hopkins over the years, paid in full by my insurance. So the registrar checked on the matter, and it turns out that a "nurse" in a third-world country (I won't say which, and I use quotation marks around the word nurse because I have no idea whether she met the stringent requirements of nursing in the U.S.) was reviewing my file some six thousand miles away to make a determination as to whether or not my State employee insurance would pay for a CT scan in the outpatient department of a major hospital.
Why? Because suddenly I was OUT OF NETWORK!
3) Again, on that visit to Hopkins, some 2.5 hours' drive from my home, I took the lab orders my rheumatologist had given me that same day to the Outpatient lab for blood work. "Don't take these home with you; I want you to have them done here," my doctor had told me. "They are quite specialized, and I want you to have them done here." And so I'd trotted to the correct place and handed over my orders only to be told that I could not have the lab work done there as I'd had numerous times over the previous four years. Why? Because my insurance company, the same one that had paid for these services over the past four years, had decided Hopkins was OUT OF NETWORK and, on top of that, had decreed that all lab work had to be performed at a LapCorp.
Why? Because suddenly I was OUT OF NETWORK!
3) Again, on that visit to Hopkins, some 2.5 hours' drive from my home, I took the lab orders my rheumatologist had given me that same day to the Outpatient lab for blood work. "Don't take these home with you; I want you to have them done here," my doctor had told me. "They are quite specialized, and I want you to have them done here." And so I'd trotted to the correct place and handed over my orders only to be told that I could not have the lab work done there as I'd had numerous times over the previous four years. Why? Because my insurance company, the same one that had paid for these services over the past four years, had decided Hopkins was OUT OF NETWORK and, on top of that, had decreed that all lab work had to be performed at a LapCorp.
What? I repeat that it was my physician who'd asked me to have the tests performed at Hopkins. I'd had blood tests performed there many times--an advantage because the results are entered immediately into my electronic health record (another episode on that coming up!)
No doubt a few fat cats took that exclusive contract all the way to the bank … on our dime and our inconvenience. I hope they each got a few sports cars on that deal, and I hope they ride themselves right off the fiscal cliff where the filthy rich in this country all need to go.
No doubt a few fat cats took that exclusive contract all the way to the bank … on our dime and our inconvenience. I hope they each got a few sports cars on that deal, and I hope they ride themselves right off the fiscal cliff where the filthy rich in this country all need to go.
Lest you find my politics distasteful, I must emphasize that this is not a Republican vs. Democrat or vice versa problem. I don’t want to turn
off my conservative readers, though I doubt I have any left. I wish they'd listen because, I can nearly guarantee them, they will suffer the same misery I've barely even touched upom yet should they get suddenly, seriously ill as I did, and as will any Democrat,
Independent, Green, Socialist, Commie, or person of any or no political persuasion
(which is a political persuasion in itself) in these United States of America.
I didn’t say “Republican,” because most Republicans are swimming in the money they stole from us through “trickle-down economics.” Oh, wait. I misspoke. Most Republicans are middle and working class folks. The ones who are getting hurt just as hard as the rest of us, thanks to the legislators they vote in to manipulate the law of the land in favor of the mega rich. Justice and equality for all?
It's not that most Republicans are swimming in money; it's more that most of our mega rich fellow citizens tend to be Republicans--or at least profess to be, since that party has always been known as the party of the rich, promoting policies that benefit the rich and hurt the middle and working classes.
I picture them sitting around a stunning Brazilian chestnut conference table, brainstorming ideas to buy through Congress, puffing their cigars, floor-to-ceiling windows offering an expansive vista of blue sky and the Rocky Mountains (that's where a lot of these mega rich folks happen to live, in at least one or two of their family's mansions, anyway).
Okay, stay on point, Mary Dell. Thank you, Brother R.
My experience of late with the health care policy I pay a good chunk of my take-home pay to maintain has convinces me I've fallen into the rabbit hole. Logic, efficiency, compassion--all blasted to hell, as they were in Wonderland, for the most part. (I did dig that caterpillar with the hookah.)
If anything, those on Medicaid and Medicare have it better in many ways--the hoops they have to jump through are far fewer in number than private insurance has devised. No IN NETWORK or OUT OF NETWORK, for instance, which is just stupid. In today's wired world, there are NO health care costs saved by having anything in or out of network. It's just another way for the CEOs and their beneficiaries to make money off of our pain compounded by unnecessary inconvenience.
Sounds great, but I've witnessed persons--some close to me and others total strangers--being treated as "less than" other patients. While in the hospital, my son heard a patient down the hall calling out in distress for a pain pill. He then heard one nurse say to another, "Oh, don't rush--he's a Medicaid case."
I have witnessed in person persons with Medicaid being treated as second-class citizens in health care institutions, so maybe all that absurd and useless and wasteful paper work (that we pay for) is worth getting good health care.
Wait, that's pretty convoluted. But so is everything else about this system.
I have a lot more to tell you, but I do tend to go on. Stay tuned, and I'll share additional nightmares in the rabbit hole with you.
I like Gaby Gifford, but I'll bet they didn't tell her they wouldn't do her CT scans at the hospital she went to after being shot or even in follow-up visits. Nor will any other legislator face what his or her constituents face--the enormous task of keeping track of and participating in an endless paper trail to meet the Byzantine requirements of your top-notch insurance company's actually paying for your claim.
Get sick. You'll find out.
And it's not just the health care system and insurance companies robbing us blind, as we well know. Goldman Sachs, anyone? Or the other investment firms George W. Bush insisted on bailing out of the financial disaster they themselves created (oh, yes; President Obama was simply continuing a program his predecessor had instituted).
If, as I've asked before, the whole point of Reaganomics was to give the investing class more capital in order to create more jobs, where the hell are the jobs? They've got a far higher percentage of our nation's wealth than ever before in our history.
It's not that most Republicans are swimming in money; it's more that most of our mega rich fellow citizens tend to be Republicans--or at least profess to be, since that party has always been known as the party of the rich, promoting policies that benefit the rich and hurt the middle and working classes.
I picture them sitting around a stunning Brazilian chestnut conference table, brainstorming ideas to buy through Congress, puffing their cigars, floor-to-ceiling windows offering an expansive vista of blue sky and the Rocky Mountains (that's where a lot of these mega rich folks happen to live, in at least one or two of their family's mansions, anyway).
Okay, stay on point, Mary Dell. Thank you, Brother R.
My experience of late with the health care policy I pay a good chunk of my take-home pay to maintain has convinces me I've fallen into the rabbit hole. Logic, efficiency, compassion--all blasted to hell, as they were in Wonderland, for the most part. (I did dig that caterpillar with the hookah.)
If anything, those on Medicaid and Medicare have it better in many ways--the hoops they have to jump through are far fewer in number than private insurance has devised. No IN NETWORK or OUT OF NETWORK, for instance, which is just stupid. In today's wired world, there are NO health care costs saved by having anything in or out of network. It's just another way for the CEOs and their beneficiaries to make money off of our pain compounded by unnecessary inconvenience.
Sounds great, but I've witnessed persons--some close to me and others total strangers--being treated as "less than" other patients. While in the hospital, my son heard a patient down the hall calling out in distress for a pain pill. He then heard one nurse say to another, "Oh, don't rush--he's a Medicaid case."
I have witnessed in person persons with Medicaid being treated as second-class citizens in health care institutions, so maybe all that absurd and useless and wasteful paper work (that we pay for) is worth getting good health care.
Wait, that's pretty convoluted. But so is everything else about this system.
I have a lot more to tell you, but I do tend to go on. Stay tuned, and I'll share additional nightmares in the rabbit hole with you.
I like Gaby Gifford, but I'll bet they didn't tell her they wouldn't do her CT scans at the hospital she went to after being shot or even in follow-up visits. Nor will any other legislator face what his or her constituents face--the enormous task of keeping track of and participating in an endless paper trail to meet the Byzantine requirements of your top-notch insurance company's actually paying for your claim.
Get sick. You'll find out.
And it's not just the health care system and insurance companies robbing us blind, as we well know. Goldman Sachs, anyone? Or the other investment firms George W. Bush insisted on bailing out of the financial disaster they themselves created (oh, yes; President Obama was simply continuing a program his predecessor had instituted).
If, as I've asked before, the whole point of Reaganomics was to give the investing class more capital in order to create more jobs, where the hell are the jobs? They've got a far higher percentage of our nation's wealth than ever before in our history.
And those selfsame “job creators” are given a lower tax rate
than either you or I because they’re going to make this country better, right? Of course! That's what Reagan told us they'd do with all that money they'd amass by paying lower tax rates than we little people. they told us they'd do Why do the mega rich deserve to keep a bigger percentage of their money--even though they already have more homes and cars and islands and countries than any human being should believe him or herself worthy of having? Again, the paucity--the absolute lack?--of logic in such a scheme.
We should all be expected to give equally in a nation predicated on the concept of equality.
Ooops, but that statement smelled of Socialism, that dreaded system of somewhat more equitably sharing the wealth of industries to which we all contribute.
Or, wait, maybe that would be Christianity, the religion a perplexingly large percentage of our population ascribes to--"Even as you have done this unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me." Or, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or many other examples from the sermons of Jesus Christ, the entity most of the mega rich in this country--and the ones they've hoodwinked into believing their pack of lies, claim as their Lord and Savior. Never mind what he said about the rich--how a camel could go through the eye of a needle faster than they'll get to the heaven they profess to believe in.
Did that scripture change somewhere recently? Because I can't understand how loudly self-proclaimed Christians reconcile the concept of "Take care of the least of our brethren" with militant greed. I recently read that we in the U.S. have, in general, the most comfortable existence in the world, and yet we complain the loudest. Come on! Do we want to be whiners and haters? Neither sounds like a trait Jesus would extol from atop Mount Sinai.
Wait, maybe it's not Socialism or Christianity we're talking about, but isn't the credo of our nation--"With liberty and justice for all ...."
Liberty and Justice for All?
Yeah, right. If you can pay for it, you'll get liberty, and you'll get justice, in your mind at least, even if you've performed heinous financial (or other) crimes against humanity. (Sorry, Lady Justice, but your blindfold was ripped off long ago.) Gosh, I do sound sour there, don't I?
I guess I'm getting bitter, tired of pushing this boulder up the steps for the thousandth time. I'll try to lighten up. BUT just remember, unless you are one of the "superior" class of Americans--the mega mega rich--you might easily find yourself like me, lost in a circus fun show where reality is twisted into a grotesque version of itself.
I'm not such a bad human being; I've worked most of my life; I've paid my taxes and have been grateful to pay into a system supporting education, health care, a subsistence (at least) for the poor, disabled, and elderly. There but for the grace of God go I, didn't we used to say? Frankly, I'm embarrassed by the numbers on the explanations of benefits my insurance company sends me--I get them quite frequently, as my health appears to be tanking.
But I have health insurance; I pay $300 a month out of my modest monthly salary for it, as I've done in the 36 months I've been on that policy. Shouldn't I expect to be reimbursed at the same rate and for the same things they'd been reimbursing me for in the past?
Hey, I know medical costs are through the roof. They're through the roof and landing in treasure chests on Caribbean islands. I'm pretty darned sure I'm on my insurance company's list of most expensive patients. And I don't take pride in that at all. If I didn't feel so damned lousy (and not by lice, thank goodness), I'd never go to a doctor. I'm fascinated with medicinal plants and wildflowers--and I'd prefer to treat myself that way than succumb to this madness.
But cliche reminds us we have to play the hand we were dealt, and for some reason I've been struck by a weird litany of health conditions, and as tired as I get I do think just lying down and never waking up doesn't sound so bad. But what about the effect on my kids? Is it fair to them to just give up? I know my parents' deaths in my twenties devastated me and cause me pain to this very moment.
I may not like all this running around, being stabbed with needles, and being made to feel as if I'm a Munchhausen case--but I'll do it for my kids. I'll do it for me, too, because I love this world, this life, my friends, my honey.
Okay, Viewers, dismount soon to be added--and proofreading will continue then, too--so please excuse any typos or omitted words or other such disasters.
We should all be expected to give equally in a nation predicated on the concept of equality.
Ooops, but that statement smelled of Socialism, that dreaded system of somewhat more equitably sharing the wealth of industries to which we all contribute.
Or, wait, maybe that would be Christianity, the religion a perplexingly large percentage of our population ascribes to--"Even as you have done this unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me." Or, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or many other examples from the sermons of Jesus Christ, the entity most of the mega rich in this country--and the ones they've hoodwinked into believing their pack of lies, claim as their Lord and Savior. Never mind what he said about the rich--how a camel could go through the eye of a needle faster than they'll get to the heaven they profess to believe in.
Did that scripture change somewhere recently? Because I can't understand how loudly self-proclaimed Christians reconcile the concept of "Take care of the least of our brethren" with militant greed. I recently read that we in the U.S. have, in general, the most comfortable existence in the world, and yet we complain the loudest. Come on! Do we want to be whiners and haters? Neither sounds like a trait Jesus would extol from atop Mount Sinai.
Wait, maybe it's not Socialism or Christianity we're talking about, but isn't the credo of our nation--"With liberty and justice for all ...."
Liberty and Justice for All?
Yeah, right. If you can pay for it, you'll get liberty, and you'll get justice, in your mind at least, even if you've performed heinous financial (or other) crimes against humanity. (Sorry, Lady Justice, but your blindfold was ripped off long ago.) Gosh, I do sound sour there, don't I?
I guess I'm getting bitter, tired of pushing this boulder up the steps for the thousandth time. I'll try to lighten up. BUT just remember, unless you are one of the "superior" class of Americans--the mega mega rich--you might easily find yourself like me, lost in a circus fun show where reality is twisted into a grotesque version of itself.
I'm not such a bad human being; I've worked most of my life; I've paid my taxes and have been grateful to pay into a system supporting education, health care, a subsistence (at least) for the poor, disabled, and elderly. There but for the grace of God go I, didn't we used to say? Frankly, I'm embarrassed by the numbers on the explanations of benefits my insurance company sends me--I get them quite frequently, as my health appears to be tanking.
But I have health insurance; I pay $300 a month out of my modest monthly salary for it, as I've done in the 36 months I've been on that policy. Shouldn't I expect to be reimbursed at the same rate and for the same things they'd been reimbursing me for in the past?
Hey, I know medical costs are through the roof. They're through the roof and landing in treasure chests on Caribbean islands. I'm pretty darned sure I'm on my insurance company's list of most expensive patients. And I don't take pride in that at all. If I didn't feel so damned lousy (and not by lice, thank goodness), I'd never go to a doctor. I'm fascinated with medicinal plants and wildflowers--and I'd prefer to treat myself that way than succumb to this madness.
But cliche reminds us we have to play the hand we were dealt, and for some reason I've been struck by a weird litany of health conditions, and as tired as I get I do think just lying down and never waking up doesn't sound so bad. But what about the effect on my kids? Is it fair to them to just give up? I know my parents' deaths in my twenties devastated me and cause me pain to this very moment.
I may not like all this running around, being stabbed with needles, and being made to feel as if I'm a Munchhausen case--but I'll do it for my kids. I'll do it for me, too, because I love this world, this life, my friends, my honey.
Okay, Viewers, dismount soon to be added--and proofreading will continue then, too--so please excuse any typos or omitted words or other such disasters.
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