Yakoob on 6/11/2013 at 02:27
So for those amerikens not yet on insurance, the deadline to choose a government-subsidied plan is tomorrow*. For a lower-income self-employed individual like me, some good savings come at the price of putting up with the (
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/361750/consumer-reports-stay-away-healthcaregov-alec-torres) utterly, (
http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/obamacare-healthcare-gov-website-cost/) terribly and (
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/healthcare-gov-slightly-less-bad/index.htm) embarrasingly broken government sites like Covered California.
I actually could not even register at first since the javascript had errors, and after, I couldn't complete my profile because it somehow thought my "date you got your greencard" meant "birth date" and would not accept the year. Somehow I got through that and the plan-comparer, while nice, loads slow as ass and times out randomy. I tried to use Live Chat to ask a question but that gave me an internal server error too. Awesome.
But shit website aside, I finally chose one of the cheapest PPO plans. I was going to go with a nicer one to get some better benefits (I do expect some doctor visits in near future sadly) until I read about the 6-month set wait periods and needing authorization for out-of-network providers.
So basically I might need to wait 6+months only to be denied a given specialist, all the while paying premiums. Whoop-de-fucking-do. So I am treating this as the health "insurance" it is not health "care" as people mistakenly herald it as.
Have you decided which company you want to give your money away to?
* at least here in California, may be different in other states
Nicker on 6/11/2013 at 05:44
Kind of sounds like some hostile bureaucrats have sabotaged the process so the GOP can declare "THERE! We told you Obama-care wouldn't work!"
I am so glad my parents chose Canada to emigrate to. You know we love you guys south of the border but damned if we will ever understand you.
Queue on 6/11/2013 at 06:29
^ The irony of what you just said is, all we hear (at least in Michigan) is how much Canadians hate their healthcare system, how it is breaking you financially, how awful the service is, how you have long waits for service, how serious illness is not even dealt with to save costs, and that you all get substandard treatment.
Nicker on 6/11/2013 at 07:12
Several years ago our national broadcaster ran a poll to find out who was our favourite Canadian. The comfortable winner was (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas) Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian Medicare.
As much as it could always use improvement and as much as people like to bitch about it (or about anything for that matter), we are all secretly glad that we don't have to choose between open heart surgery and the mortgage.
My father spent three weeks dying in hospital. He had a private room so we could keep our vigil around the clock without being disturbed or disturbing others. He received compassionate care even as he lay in a coma. The staff were unhurried and respectful. We were never hounded by insurance adjusters or hospital bean counters. Our biggest expense was lost wages and the exorbitant cost of parking.
I have had three life saving surgeries each of which would have bankrupted the average family in the states or, by accounts I have heard, simply been denied them.
Tell me that is not worth a marginally higher personal tax rate.
It seems to me that the lion's share of the money spent on health care in the US goes to litigating the insurance companies out of honouring their side of the bargain.
Muzman on 6/11/2013 at 08:35
Yeah, the coverage of all this has made more people appreciate what they have back home.
Medicare is a bit screwy sometimes, but it's not the USA. Could put that on a poster.
Anyway, EA can't launch a server for Sim City to serve one thing to a few million gamers. I don't know why people are all that surprised 50 states can't quickly develop sites to serve a thousand things to tens of millions without some fairly large hiccups.
Be grumpy by all means, but not surprised.
Volitions Advocate on 6/11/2013 at 08:51
Muzman, that is exactly what I have been thinking while watching this whole thing. I guess all the haters didn't wait on the BMS website for the countdown to reach zero right before the website just gave up.
as for canadian health care. Our problems are administrative ones. A few years back I worked for the laundry contractor for the Calgary Health Region. And they had such a massive development budget they built a new childrens hospital in the city, put 2 extra floors on top of another hospital, and built a new parkade and a couple of support buildings for the city's biggest hospital. The problem was their operating budget was so tight that after spending the hundreds of millions of dollars to build all this stuff, you still had to fight the logistics guy in the basement for a couple of AA batteries, and they were always short staffed because they coudln't afford to hire any more people. the money was there. It was just in the wrong account.
Things are a little different now, but its still just administrative things and a little bit of corruption that is in the process of being rooted out and reformed.
Took my kid in to see the doc because he was sick. Turns out he has tonsilitus. The visit cost us nothing. we had to pay for the meds, but that's only because we don't have health insurance.
The idea of not having to choose which of the 2 fingers you got chopped get to be sewn back on your hand being something that anybody in the US would be opposed to boggles my mind. Even with the growing pains that are sure to come. Hell we've had it for decades and its obvious we're still dealing with growing pains.
faetal on 6/11/2013 at 12:42
The US system is indefensible and one of the least efficient / most expensive in the world, since most of the money is creamed off as profit or ploughed into the legal side of having a non-integrated healthcare system. The fact the UK seems to be dead set on following suit makes me super glad I'm fucking off to France.
Queue on 8/11/2013 at 01:48
Quote:
New Mexico TV station KOB4 has the scoop on David Eckert of Deming, New Mexico, who was stopped by police after they said he didn’t come a complete stop at a stop sign while exiting a Wal-Mart.
When Eckert stepped out of his car, officers believed he was clenching his buttocks for some reason, KOB4 said. They took him to a local emergency room and ordered an anal cavity search after securing a warrant for one. Doctors there refused to do it because they believed it to be unethical.
But the doctors at Gila Regional Medical Center apparently had no such ethical qualms. According to medical records and lawsuit documents, Eckert was subjected to the following procedures over the next few hours:
1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.
Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures.
Again, no narcotics were found. And as the TV station reports, there were several problems with the warrant, including the fact that it was not valid in the county where the searches were performed and that it expired three hours before the procedures began.
So my question is, who in the hell is going to pay
this hospital bill?
Mr. headbone on 8/11/2013 at 12:47
Unfortunately; WE do through higher monthly premium rates. :tsktsk::nono:
Aja on 13/11/2013 at 07:38
Quote Posted by Queue
^ The irony of what you just said is, all we hear (at least in Michigan) is how much Canadians hate their healthcare system, how it is breaking you financially, how awful the service is, how you have long waits for service, how serious illness is not even dealt with to save costs, and that you all get substandard treatment.
A year ago last month, my mom suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. She had been living with it for much of her life, apparently, and never knew it, although the frequent headaches were a clue. Here's how it went down.
She felt sick on Saturday and went into seizure on Sunday. We immediately called the ambulance. Within a few minutes, firefighters were at our house to assess the situation. An ambulance arrived within 10 minutes and took her to the University hospital. She was given a CT scan within the first few hours, and we learned that she had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which meant that the blood from the aneurysm was being absorbed into adjacent brain tissue, causing a restriction of blood flow. They scheduled an operation to stem the bleeding for the next morning.
The process itself involved inserting long, thin, platinum wires into an artery in her leg in order to reach the site of the aneurysm. By applying an electric charge to the wires, they curl up and stop the blood flow. It's less invasive than operating directly on the brain and was apparently only developed within the last few decades. They needed three wires to stop the bleeding, at a cost of $1,000 per. That's $3,000 of platinum in my mom's head.
She was stable but unconscious afterwards. There was still a risk of spasms until the blood from the aneurysm was fully absorbed, so they put her in intensive care, keeping her blood pressure high and monitoring her 24 hours a day. We were told that it would take at least 10 days before complete absorption, during which time her risk of death was still extremely high.
About halfway through that 10-day period some serious spams occurred, and the neurosurgeon elected to operate again. This time they performed an angioplasty, to widen some of the restricted blood vessels. The operation was successful, and a week after that she was out of intensive care.
Her memory of the last month was gone. She was awake and could interact with us now, but she was slow and confused. She claimed that she couldn't think straight. It felt to me like something essential about her, her uniqueness, her spirit, had been lost.
But she continued to improve, and after another several weeks in the hospital she was released to a rehabilitation hospital, also run by Alberta Health Services, our government health agency. There they began mental and physical rehabilitation, and it was in that hospital where I had my first conversation with her in which I felt her old presence. It wasn't quite the same, but it was distinctly there.
Today, over a year later, she's alive and well. Her short-term memory has been affected, but she continues to attend group therapy sessions at the rehab hospital. She recently just signed up for another session. Without this therapy she wouldn't have the motivation to exercise her brain, and she would let it atrophy. It seems to be invaluable to her eventual recovery. Incidentally, her headaches are gone, and her mood has improved considerably since before the aneurysm.
The total cost out of pocket for all of these operations and treatments and therapy was nothing at all.
Now, I'm not so naive as to say that what happened is representative of all Canadian health care or medicare in general. But this certainly wasn't a fluke, and not a day goes by that I don't feel grateful for how amazingly well the system worked in this case. I've often wondered what the case would have been were we living in the United States. One flaw here is that prescription drugs aren't covered -- my mom's employee health plan pays for her anti-seizure medication -- but it's looking like that might be changing in the near-future, at least in Alberta.
