Posted on 10/23/2009 12:54:50 PM PDT by lifeisacarnival
The First Lady cited a new study from the Department of Health and Human Services -- which just happened to come out today -- citing breast cancer patients with insurance who had to pay an average of $6,200 in out-of-pocket costs each year. "This is with insurance," Mrs. Obama said. "These are the people who are blessed." The situation is, of course, far worse for those without insurance, Mrs. Obama said.
But the insurance companies make life miserable even for those with coverage. "And then there are those annual lifetime caps that insurance companies set," Mrs. Obama said, with "one recent survey show[ing] that ten percent of all cancer patients report hitting a cap on their benefits…"
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
My Grandmother when I was just a opinionated kid, had aggressive BC. Back when Breast surgery was mutilation. She was given 5 years. But our great small town Doc treated her and she live another 20 years. I never give up. Especially with todays cutting edge medicine.
Protocol in GB, if I remember correctly, is a mammogram every 3 years, after 50. Your odds are bad if you have cancer and have to wait that long for diagnosis.
I’mma let chew get back to yo breass cancer munt but Barack say pass healthcare or I’mma gonna knock you out.
No,she would not. She would be paer of the ruling elite ant thus exempt from the rules the serfs have to follow.
She would not have to wait but you would.
For the Race everything, for those outside the race, nothing.
Mussolini never made the trains run on time.
People without insurance are in trouble if they get breast cancer, says Michelle.
I think she forgot to add that if they cause a car accident without automobile insurance, they will also be in trouble.
Oh, and she should have added that people without food really get hungry. People without coats get cold. People without cell phones can’t ever be reached when they are not home. And worst of all, if you don’t go to the bathroom, you will have wet pants.
Our Patient-Dumping First Lady is lying through her pearly WHITE teeth.
For these people (Democrats) no moment is without its political calculation.
Considering a lot of the new cars on the road cost 30K, that sounds like a bargain to me. I'd rather have my life than new wheels.
Michelle has no business acting like $6200 is a lot of cabbage when her husband hands out $4500 for clunkers and 8K for new home buyers. That number is just stupid anyway.
I do hope she gets a pink mop for Christmas, though.
The COST will NOT go down; it's just a matter of whose wallet the money comes from.
They are promoting SOMEBODY ELSE WHO CAN AFFORD TO PAY FOR YOU as the "utopia" for their dead-ass voterbase.
annual lifetime caps?
Well, Michelle, which is it?
Its fairly standard insurance to have about $1K deductible and 20% copay. So she’s getting about $26K worth of treatment every year for $6K. My out of pocket max is $6K, so if their insurance is the same, she could be getting way more treatment every year. It just takes $26K to hit the out of pocket max.
The new PBO-CARE better have a deductible and copay or our doctors are going to be overwhelmed and the this is going to cost way to much.. But I’m sure PBO wants free healthcare for all.
It all depends on the type of insurance you have. I have a couple friends who have been treated for breast cancer recently, then had the chemo and radiation. They have had a max out of pocket per year...for one woman it was around $3500, the other was around $5000. However, that did not include the co-payments...they were neither included in the deductible or the max out of pocket, so if you throw in the co-payments for regular visits to the surgeon, oncologist, hematologist, etc., I imagine it might add up to that figure for some insurance plans.
This assumption of Ms Obama is so untrue. I have had multiple surgeries, hospital stays, bone scans ,physical therapy,mamagrams every year, and finally extensive reconstructive surgery and it never cost me anything over my monthly insurance payment. The only thing I ever paid for was my co pay for Dr’s office visits.
$6200 a year is a pretty reasonable sum to pay for your life.
I tend to agree with you - she’s $6200 poorer than she o/w would be but she’s alive. And her form of cancer was particularly vicious and only responded to a rare combo of drugs that she got on a study.
What should one’s out of pocket costs be? Zero?
My wife and I got screwed by an insurance company over breast cancer. She had it twice and the last time she discovered a lump in the "other side" and the doctors said it was benign and they didn't need to even check it out. My wife, having already been through chemo and a lumpectomy, said "hell no!" The insurance agree to pay for the one side of the double mastectomy if it was found to be malignant, which it turned out it was. They never paid and we had to foot the bill.
This isn't to say I agree with anything "Shellie" says.
One wonders, why are not the inadequacies addressed, rather than simply putting the insurance companies out of business altogether?
Insurance companies are in business to make a profit, and failing that, they do go out of business. They have to walk a rather delicate balance at all times, to assure what they pay out in claims does not exceed what they have made in returns on investments, and continuously receive in premiums paid in by participating insured individuals and entities.
You see, ANY insurance company is making a bet that some calamity will NOT happen to you, while you are making the bet that it WILL happen. Life insurance, motor vehicle insurance, health insurance, fire insurance, the game is the same. Only the odds differ in each instance, which has something to do with how much is paid for insurance against a given risk.
That is the operative word, risk. No one is OBLIGATED to purchase insurance, and in fact, many people choose this option of going uninsured. Just as they climb the sides of mountains and play dodge’m with oncoming locomotives. The physical impact of risk, or the appearance of risk, does stimulate the the nervous system and the resulting rush as the body’s physiology responds. At the end, all of us, every one, will die. Despite belief to the contrary, some day, at some point, our physical bodies will fail us. The question is, what will be the means of our demise, and how would knowledge of that affect our behavior? Being poor dumb human beings with not much more awareness than a bullfrog most of the time, we just keep muddling through.
And the world STILL has a lot of bullfrogs.
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