Posted on 04/24/2008 8:01:21 AM PDT by britlabour
Exactly what it sounds like...either acute or chronic unbearable pain.
Even though the industry cackles on and on about pain being the 5th vital sign now, it’s all too often ignored because it’s so subjective.
In my wife’s case...they (over a dozen doctors) kept telling us it was endometriosis, interstitial cystitis...in her head...
and wrote her off sent her home and I wouldn’t back down and they finally relented to a hernia repair I kept demanding they fix...I just couldn’t give up on her, and LO AND BEHOLD when they opened her up...a tumor the size of a cantaloupe is in the roof of her bladder and strangled it.
They couldn’t find it ‘cause it kept falling down inside the bladder ‘cause it was so dense and wouldn’t show up on scans! For 6 long miserable years this went on...and to this day I don’t blame the technology, the docotrs...BUT the system and insurance companies were our very worst enemy second ONLY to the tumor itself!
They denied bills...made our lives a living HELL!
Long story short, they removed her whole bladder, but EVERY time she urinated she described it as like having childbirth all over again...she’s much better now, but it’ll never be the same.
Two words: Tilly Merrell
http://archive.worcesternews.co.uk/2005/2/25/22035.html
And contemplate what it’s like for a little girl and her family to spend the first 8 years of her life prohibiting her from eating a single bite of food, and having wear a machine on her back that pumps food through a hole into her stomach. All when there was NOTHING wrong with her. Took about 5 minutes for the evil capitalist doctors in the US to figure this out and send her out to enjoy a hamburger.
No long waits??
It often takes over two years get a simple HEARING AID!!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3111430.ece
After six months waiting, this 76 year old was moving up the waiting list at a pace that put her on track to receive a hearing aid in 14 YEARS!!!
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23370097-details/Pensioner’s+14-year+wait+for+a+hearing+aid/article.do
But they really speed things up for the very elderly. This 108 year old woman was told she’d have a mere 18 month wait to get her hearing aid.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=471617&in_page_id=1770
Maybe a trip to the ER will open some eyes: hospitals have a cute little system set up now where they employ ER MD’s that “aren’t part of hospital’s staff”, thereby relinquishing them of any obligation to such laws.
And as I mentioned unless you died or got injured...GOOD LUCK in finding an attorney to take on your plight, in ANY case!
As I mentioned, ignoring this stuff will ONLY bring about universal coverage all the quicker!
Maybe you just see cracks where I see gaping holes.
Someone mentioned it before...the military is a system I’m actually trying to get back into...I also worked within it and never had, or witnessed serious problems.
But that’s me, and not everyone can be in the military.
I think we need a free marke capitalist hybrid of some sort, with catastrophic coverage separate from routine healthcare and a way to chose tiers an levels of coverage. And some way to actually get the medicines you need without being denied.
Another cute trick the insurance companies do is deny payment for let’s say a lab bill. When you ask why, they say it’s because the doctor wrote down the wrong diagnosis. I always ak and how is that MY fault, and why shoud I be obligated to do his work properly...
but again, I might as well be asking a person at the car wash to address this problem for all the good it’s done me!
The insurance companies now are horrible and all too often penalize decent people for the idiots that leech off of us. Such is the nature of the beast.
Maybe the poor can have a universal system of their own...while the rest of us have the our own system? Who knows the answer...but after 2 decades of working within it and having the misfortune of serious problems personally, it’s BROKEN! Period.
Permanently? I don’t know but I fear for the future because the knee jerk reacion will be universal coverage.
The plans we’ve had over the years dictate which doc you can see anyway, which meds they’ll pay for anyway...and do a schizo, no rhyme or reason psychotic job all too often at that.
Being a hospice nurse for some 15 years...as well as home health, nursing homes...AND talking with nurses and doctors etc. within the business, it’s CLEARLY broken.
Just from the aspect of medicare fraud and medicaid fraud ALONE it’s broken.
Pharmaceuticals and insurance companies are a large part of the problem.
Granted universal care is worse, but ignoring the problems we now have will bring about such a nightmare that much quicker IMO.
And as I pointed out, I’m already afraid it’s too late. I’m watching this thing slip away from within and it’s ... sad.
Like so much of all our society, public schools, etc.
Last fall we had a guy on hospice with end-stage liver disease...drug addict and alcoholic destroyed his life...mid-40’s. Unfortunately he was miserable and had to get “tapped”: remove the fluid build-up in his belly. VERY simple and inexpensive procedure; IT’s the humane things to do, but because he was indigent, he only got “one tap on the house”.
The issue was transporting him over to get it done, not the cost of the procedure itself...so he died a miserable death.
I know he did this to himself for the most part, and at least it wasn’t an AGONIZING death since he got (cheap) morphine, but what if he was a middle class person that spent down all his assets, and ended up losing out on the liver transplant list with liver failure from, let’s say liver cancer through “no fault” of his own?
We deal with that pretty routinely with people spending down their life’s savings on cancer...or AIDS.
There will be no perfect system, but there are too many capitalist hating liberals to take the time to do this right, I’m afraid.
No one is claiming that the system is perfect. As I said, we had a terrible experience, and I became quite familiar with hospital emergency rooms, ICU’s, etc. No attorney was willing to take our case, either, and our father died as a result of what any reasonable person would consider medical malpractice.
But this thread is about complete government control - socialized medicine - and whether or not it would be an improvement on our current system. And, so far, no one has presented evidence that it would be.
Yes, in a sense we already HAVE socialized medicine, it’s just not universal or fully controlled by liberals. YET.
I truly fear for the future.
We’re doing our very best with our kids now in preventative medicine!
I once called my congresswoman over that debacle with my employer defrauding us...and her EXACT words were: “Oh honey I’m in bed with the insurance companies, I can’t help you”.
I appreciated her honesty, but I’ll never forget that.
Agreed...my only caveat is too many people are so disillusioned with what’s in place beyond the tipping point of JUST DOING SOMETHING, ANYTHING...CHANGE for CHANGE’S sake...blah blah blah...
sound familiar?
We do ourselves no favors by down-playing or outright ignoring what’s going on all around us! Or even worse, making statements like: “lawyers wiil sue hospitals for not ‘treating’ people”.
We need to acknowledge real world flaws and collectively come up with the solutions!
I TRY to do my part by limiting fraud waste and abuse.
You’d be SHOCKED at the cost of medicine we just throw out every month, that’s not even been opened and still sealed!
Six minutes?? Really?? I'd be seriously unhappy with that level of service. When my son passed out years ago on the family room floor, my wife called 911, and then immediately called me at work. As I was answering the phone, there was a knock at the door. The ambulance had arrived. Three minutes. Not too shabby.
This past summer, my younger son was experiencing double vision. It got very bad one day, and a trip to the emergency room brought a recommendation for an MRI. He went to the emergency room on September 14. Had his MRI on September 21. Discovered a brain tumor. Surgery was performed on September 26. Fortunately, it was benign.
On the other hand, the same sort of symptoms in lameass Canada with their lameass “free” health care can cause one to wait four months for an MRI, and then four months for a consultation to discuss the results of the MRI.
Try this one out for size:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Rf42zNl9U
Thank GOD I don't live in the lameass country of Canada - my kid would probably be dead as a result of the murderous “free” health care system.
This one cuts very close to home. The man featured in this video had the identical type of brain tumor as my son. Had he stayed with the murderous Canadian “free” health care system, it would have taken eight months, minimum, to be treated. Although my son's tumor was “benign,” another eight months’ worth of growth would have either killed him or crippled him permanently.
To hell with socialized medicine, and I hope all the proponents of socialized medicine drop dead. Socialized medicine is little more than legalized murder.
You can take your socialized medicine and keep it. We Americans in the large majority of instances get superior care to you, and we don’t want to have to wait in line for surgical procedures and tests - if government will allow us to do so.
And, BTW, we don’t want to have to do dental work on ourselves, as some Brits seem forced to do because of the lack of dental services.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2007101/posts?page=1
There’s a REALLY big reason why I don’t want government controlled health care.
1. Under “free,” socialized health care, there is overusage by the population, then govt caps the budget. That causes shortages & long waits.
2. There is no innovation, and the “cheap” drugs are developed by costly R&D still done by [free market] health care countries.
Socialized medicine nations do no research, they take our costly breakthroughs, and sell them “cheaply” (read: without paying any of the heavy research costs, and pretending it’s ‘cheap’ to provide them.)
Free riders on capitalism & competition.
3. Notice that you got health care, but did not pay the extreme taxes involved domestically. Feel lucky.
4L
I just gave a talk about this very subject yesterday, at my college. I can cut & paste my notes, and place them on this link, later next week (they are on my office computer).
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