Posted on 12/18/2011 9:35:15 AM PST by Nachum
A recent vacation in Mexico turned into a nightmare for a 79-year-old Illinois man. But it wasn't a devastating bus crash that almost killed U.S.-born Alfonso Acosta.
It was his stay in one of Mexico's government-run hospitals.
According to a harrowing account in the Quad-City Times, a daily newspaper, Acosta suffered a "major head injury, multiple facial fractures, broken ribs and a punctured lung." Yet for five weeks he lay "virtually untreated" at the hospital where he was taken in Toluca, about 40 miles southwest from Mexico City, say outraged family members in the United States who rushed to his bedside.
They found him in a hospital room with six other patients. They barely recognized him: His head was grotesquely swollen and his urine contained clotted blood from an improperly placed catheter. Alarmed at his deteriorating condition and by the indifferent and seemingly incompetent medical personnel who were treating him, family members began caring for Acosta themselves, all while dealing with medical personnel who were unable or unwilling to speak English.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Traveling in 3rd World countries, or even most better countries, its a real good idea to have Med Evac Insurance to bring you back to the States.
With all the hatred Mexico hears from USA, no wonder Gringos are not well cared for.
Now that was the real Mexico!
Was this experience in the US?
My experience is different. We also live in area that is rated as having the highest medical fees anywhere in the country. It is commonplace for insurance companies to deny full payment to them on the grounds of excessive charges. While they can then go after the patient for the remainder, I think patients have recourse if it can be proven that the fees are excessive or the regulators can force the insurance company to pay more, if not the total. Normally, for non-elective procedures, the patient’s own physician will be involved in dealing with the insurance company and providing evidence of necessity for the procedures, as well as their costs.
The hospital was very obliging when I called and told them the payment schedule I could afford. No problems. I do not think it is legal for any medical facility to immediately go to collection when the patient is making good faith payments. However, for those who refuse to pay _anything_ before demanding a payment plan, the response may differ.
The MD’s fees were separate on the bill, listed under *clinic*. However, after the insurance paid, _both_ the remaining hospital fees and the remaining surgeon’s fees (including follow up and anesthesia)were combined into the total, so one monthly payment was, I suppose, divided between them. The physicians and their clinical practice are employees of the hospital. We were simply paying the contracted deductible.
I have never had a hospital refuse a payment schedule. Not one MD that I know even knows how their services are charged out, since they all receive a salary from their institution. All the former private practices in my area, save one, are now under the umbrella of a large hospital that purchased our local hospital and the practices some time ago. The various clinics retain their original names, but they are no longer privately held.
The one remaining private MD practice is a woman who does not get along with any of her peers and may not even have hospital privileges. This is because she will demand others cover her practice, will not reciprocate and is the only local physician to refuse a shift in the ER. Her practice is limited to women, revolves around laser diagnosis for osteoporosis and she is very hard-nosed about her fees. She is known to not pay her employees. Not all of her procedures are covered by insurance. She also no longer has enough patients to work a full 40-hour week and, AFAIK, is forced to do her own billing and cleaning.
Had I encountered the MD you describe, I would have run like hell the other way, found another doctor who practiced at a different hospital and probably filed as many complaints as possible with as many regulators as I could find.
Physicians are there when needed. Who would you turn to if they were not? Hospitals provide infrastructure, ERs, lab and pharmacy services. They even make their laundry facilities available for associated health professionals, for a fee. The ones I know have no real love for the plaintiff’s bar, either, but they are bound by oath to treat everyone in need. This includes not only MDs,but APRNs and vets, as well. In my small town, the local veterinarians can and do use the hospital labs for blood tests and can get some meds that they don’t normally stock from the hospital pharmacy.
Sorry for the length of this. I hate zer0care, too, but your rant just differed so much from my own experiences that I had to say something.
On our present course, sounds like America in a few years. We already have apathy, bureaucrats, a dishonest DOJ, a President who disregards the Constitution he swore to uphold without impunity, pandering, lawlessness in Congress, etc, etc. Rest assured, left as things are, we will soon be begging for those “good ol’days” in Mexico.
“...sounds like America in a few years.”
Actually, I believe we are already there, but it’s just not obvious yet. Once a government becomes infested at the highest levels (POTUS, DOJ, DNC, MSM) it is “game over” and it IS “game over” with Obama, Holder, Pelosi, Reid, etc at the helm. All that needs to happen now is for it to trickle down through every level and sector of our society.
To wit, the pace is picking up. Suspect it won’t take a few years, but rather a few months at the current pace.
In the US, a senior needing nursing home care must allow the nursing home to consume all her savings. When her assets have been consumed, she becomes eligible for Medicaid. The nursing home will deliver whatever level of care is needed to keep her alive until she's eligible for Medicaid. Once on Medicaid, the nursing home is obligated to accept Medicaid's reimbursement rates. The patient then quickly dies.
This was mid-1960s.
My Mom and step-dad were weekending in Mexico with friends. They were playing on the beach when the dune buggy they were driving rolled over and caught fire.
There had been two friends in the dune buggy, one wearing his seat belt, one not. The one not wearing a belt had his neck broken by the roll bar at roll-over and was dead. The one wearing his belt was hanging upside down in the burning vehicle.
Step-dad (who was CHP), went into the fire and cut the seat belt, pulling the guy to safety. The guys burns were on his buttocks and legs, step-dad’s were on his hands and face.
Both taken to Mexican hospital. My Mom watched them doing essentially nothing for one day, only washed his burned skin and laid a bandage over them. They were, needless to say, out of their heads from dehydration alone.
She tried talking to the staff who “no habla’d” her about to death. She walked down the hall until she saw somebodies wheelchair, which she took. Somehow (he outweighed her by about 80 lbs) rolled step-dad into the chair and loaded him into their truck.
Drove him up to San Diego and took him to the first hospital she saw. By the time she got him there, his face was unrecognizable from the swollen blistered skin, his hands unusable.
He only stayed in the American hospital for about a week, and I remember him being off work for about a month. His burns were bad, but not REAL bad. If she’d left him in Mexico, doctors said he’d have been dead in another 24 hours.
He was presented an award by the State of California for this act of heroism. I often wondered if it was for saving the guy from the fire or surviving the Mexican hospital.
I had an in-law having a procedure done in a hospital in Newark, NJ. He had a circulation problem that required some kind of special mat placed over their legs for long periods sitting in the hospital bed. The lazy nurses (and fake nurses) wouldn’t bring it, and actually sent one of my brother-in-laws to get it from a few floors down.
Thankfully, the hospital was bought out, and that trash has probably all been let go. We have some great hospitals in NJ (UMDNJ is great), but within a few miles there are some that would make Mexico’s look great.
You’re right, it is a preview of Obamacare. Here’s the flip side:
We needed an emergency room in Mexico last Christmas, but the hospital was for paying patients only. It was spotless, there were English-speaking doctors available to translate, and a specialist was on call.
A hospital bed for one night, consult with a specialist, and the appropriate drug drip. Paid the bill on the way out the next day: One hundred US dollars. Oh, and they didn’t take insurance.
I’ve never paid a bill so cheerfully.
If we could get both the government and insurance companies out of the health care industry, prices would drop like a rock here in the U.S.
Yeah. The U.S. Idaho. The hospital is the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. We don’t have insurance. Well, I will at work on the 20th of this month, when I hit one year with the company. But they don’t pay me enough to have the wife added at $400 a month. And the procedure she needs is $200 less than the $5000 deductible anyways. Her doctor is the same one that delivered the kids 20+ years ago.
The good news is I HAVE A JOB. Especially since that last one just kinda disappeared on me.
And we were sent to collections for something else even though they set up a payment plan. Made 2 payments and then got a letter from a collection agency. We weren’t late on payments. Hell, we had only made 2. But I have 2 co-workers with similar stories. One had made 3 payments when they got their collection letter. The other told me they told him they didn’t do payment plans and sent his straight to collections.
You seem kind of interested so I’ll tell you another. I was taking Chantex earlier this year to quit smoking. I have a yearly blood test for something else. I got that and my regular doc told me I needed to see a specialist for my liver. 4800 out of pocket dollars later, you know, blood work, ultrasound, biopsy, the bastards tell me it is the Chantex. Nice. That whole no-smoking thing went right the hell out the window when they scared me into thinking I was dying from cancer.
You’ll like this. In 2006 I developed this weird pain in my upper inner thigh. Then it started growing downwards. Went to the doc and got to see the PA. Told me there was nothing wrong. Bullcrap. He said he could schedule an ultrasound if I thought I REALLY needed it. I said schedule it. The tech is going wow, oh wow. He gets done and calls a Resident. I could hear the Resident (over the phone) practically screaming “You have got to be kidding me. A 14” long blood clot???” So the tech tells me to go home and my doc and this doc would consult and get back with me.
When I got home my wife is on the porch. Get back in the car she says. You have to go to the hospital. Sure. I got the cash for that. I told her no and headed for the doc instead. He insisted. I insisted more. He told me I could do self administered heparin shots twice a day for 10 days. I asked him if I could go back to work. He said yeah, sure. And join the other 280,000 people that die of this every year. So then I headed to see the boss and told him the good news. I suggested the $1000 bonus he owed me was needed immediately cause those 20 shots were $79 each. 12 months more of rat poison therapy and I’m right as rain.
Shoot the doctors first. Then the lawyers. The politicians you ask? Oh them. We’re dragging them through the streets, behind our pickups, with log chains...
Wow. Several nightmares all together in that post.
I thought about Chantex. Did some online research and decided against it. I had a terrible reaction to Zyban. Gave me terrible vertigo. I called the doc and the nurse told me I had an inner ear infection and to continue the Zyban. I knew it wasn’t an inner ear infection. It began exactly 72 hours after starting Zyban. Quit and in 8 hours it disappeared. I am nearly 69 and aside from mild psoriasis, have no other problems.
Mu husband is not quite 61. He is self employed. Insurance is high with the highest deductible allowed. It is going up due to zer0care and the agent wants to write a bridge policy freezing the premium until he is 65. It will still be another $100 a month extra. Together, we will be paying
over $9k/year out of pocket with his having a $5500 deductible.
Sux. Income is down 50% and savings are going down monthly, even with immense belt-tightening. We still have too much cash assets to get Medicaid or help with Plan D. We don’t go unless we must and even then, we wait, use OTC and natural remedies and pray they work. However any blood clot is nothing to fool with, let alone a 14” one.
His doc is great. He extends his blood pressure meds w/o the cost of an appointment, as long as he can. Other friendly actions, whenever possible from most of the med staff, here. For the local hospital/clinics, we don’t even have to set up a payment plan when the costs are for appointments and tests. We simply pay what we can each month until it is paid. I know the mother of one of the women who work in the office and they are fully aware of how onerous it is for most of us. I know my dentist let one of the hygienists go because without dental insurance, he just didn’t get the appointments to justify her being there 3 days a week.
Your hospital is nothing like ours or the big one 45” away that owns them. So far, anyway. I know everyone fears getting to the point where they are broke, working a low income job and unable to afford insurance or care. But, it isn’t the docs or the hospitals, IMO. The local hospital, last I heard was $800M in the red. The docs all work on salary, but their malpractice is paid by the hospital. Still, they do not make big bucks in the larger scheme of things. Maybe $160k/year, which isn’t out of line for the education and the being on call and the mandatory ER work.
I think it is due to the insurance companies and I know the insurance agents have had their commissions capped by law. I think the government has limited so much medical tech that there is no competition left and that is causing costs to soar. I think the beneficiaries are the friends of zer0.
What is scaring me is that tests that aren’t expensive, like PSA, are not being done or paid for unless you demand it and pay out of pocket. There really does seem to be a concerted effort to kill us off while extracting a maximum amount for the private insurance to force us to want to go on government care. Of course, then we’ll get the minimum amount of care while all the technological marvels are reserved for the elites.
In both the UK and Australia 16 bed hospital wards are the norm...a standard of care that disappeared from US hospitals decades ago. Imagine a US without private or at least semi private rooms.
My regular doc works out of his house and charges by the minute. Wife is his assistant. My last blood test was $9 and the total visit was $32. That included the blood test. He doesn’t screw around.
But anything else is through the big places. There are other hospitals. And the surgical center. But the other hospital and the surgical center are in some big fight and the wife’s doc doesn’t want to get embroiled in their crap. Can’t blame him. I’m a 50 year old cabinetmaker. We currently have a job going in at the Yellowstone Club up in Big Sky Montana. $56,000 worth of cabinets. Trouble is is that the kids I work with don’t want to do custom cabinetry. They want to stand around collecting a check. So to try and get this done I just worked 250 hours in 3 weeks. I’m dead tired. Trying to impress the client. He told me he had landed 2 more jobs. His outfit sells and subs out to various shops under the disguise of his mantle. I want him to bring us the work. Not that much out there.
ObamaCare will lead to private hospitals who only accept paying members.
Oh, BS!
If the case goes in front of them they will find justification to rule over Mexican health care and any other damn thing they wish to involve themselves in.
Please tell us what we (the USA) can do better to appease the savages to the south.
I am not sympathetic to the Mexican illegals especially those that have involvement with drugs and crime. But making blanket assurtions that all Mexicans are savages is precisely why they see us as hating them.
Contrary to what most who have not had the opportunity to have extended visits to other “less privelegded” countries may think, the USA is not paramount on their minds in any form or fashion.
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