Posted on 11/03/2013 5:53:04 PM PST by Hojczyk
I had great cancer doctors and health insurance.My plan was cancelled. Now I worry how long I'll live.
Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.
My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.
Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Everyone involved in this forgot the most basic of that which the medical profession has sworn to uphold: First, do no harm.
Modern American version of the Hippocratic Oath:
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University
First question I will ask is did the subject of the article vote for Obama. If he did, then tough, unless he includes a paragraph confessing his error. That should be the new conservative mantra. Anyone complains, we will not help him or her if they voted for Obama and Dems. Confess regret in public article, re register as an independent or GOP, then we will help. Otherwise stew in your own making.
Everyone needs to buy a bottle of silver biotics and asap silver gel. Do the research.
The author of this piece has suffered enough; she doesn’t need a sex change. Her name is EDIE, which is a woman’s name, and the article identifies her as Ms Sundby.
And yet I bet they’ll be successful pinning the problems on the makers in the private sector and the [few] conservatives in government. Somehow they always seem to be able to pull that rabbit out of their hat.
She probably didn't vote because she has no time for politics. As much as people were shouting from the rooftops that to pass this plan was suicidal, these folks watched CBS or NBC call the Tea Party folks nutjobs and believed them.
Now when they see that it was suicidal they cry, "Woe is me!"
I ask, "What flowers do you want at your funeral?"
My Woe supply is running short these days. Apathy has it's costs.
Actually no, the writer of the piece is a WOMAN.
The only life Demwits value is their own.
Oh, good grief. This could easily have happened under a Romney administration only further along since the site would be up and running.
Obama to Ms. Sundby, ““Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking painkillers.“”
Well, since he’s ‘not interested in the politics of the matter’, but it is all about politics and, at this stage, communist control, we can be sure he’s still on the team Obama. Still.
Obama is charismatic, don’t you know.
I have an associate, pleasant, great sense of humor, whose husband, though formerly (many years ago) was a reaganite, is so on team democrat, due to union loyalty, is now on this band wagon.
spoke with her months ago about it, she was going to the crowning, in january. I spoke my mind to an angry, illogical stream. We’ve re-associated, but with that schism, and she was on the other day signing up for BO don’t care and I said What!!. We dropped it. but we wrapped it up and I haven’t heard from her since.
She has to be embarrassed and frightened.
Cruz had it right. the union people have an in, here, and they are powerful but foolish.
Our Constitution does not bear this socialism and at one point it will prevail.
It’s only a small portion of people who will die b/c of losing their doctor and insurance - less than 5%.
My tag line seems appropriate here.
Death panels begin to rear their ugly heads...2014 will be the year of the pitchforks.
Don’t worry. Some drooling lackey of Dear Leader will come along and
Explain to us how this guy is just ignorant of the Glories that are Obama are.
I’ve been ‘talking’ (ok, screaming) at the TV ‘pundits’....bring up the promise that ‘if you like your Dr. you can keep your Dr’. People are upset over losing their insurance, wait ‘til some find that they won’t be able to see their Dr.
Commit a felony and get locked up and all your healthcare needs are met ....
If I get sick I’m going to say I am an ILLEGAL from Mexico.
Of course my lily white ass will give me away, but what the heck.
So, no more parts about not having sex with your slaves?!?!?!
I understand that part of the Oath from when it was written, it's just really weird to hear in this day and age. So I "get" having a modern version!
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