As you may know, I spent a few nights in the hospital back at the beginning of April and the bills have begun to roll in. So far, I'm up to $40,000, or at least I would be if Medicare didn't pick up a good portion of it. I've been in and out of hospitals since then and I'll be going back up to the Mayo Clinic on Monday and so the meter is still running. Depending upon how much surgery they do, I wouldn't be surprised to see, if I live, over a hundred thousand on that meter.
Sure, even without insurance I can write a check for a hundred K without having to check my balance, but I'm guessing that's unusual and that most folks - most productive, working folks who don't have and can't get or can't afford it would wind up in bankruptcy if they get sick. I believe that very situation is still the number one cause of personal financial disaster in America. Being self employed, back before I was eligible for Medicare, my cost for private, major medical was approaching $20,000 a year for my wife and me. If for some reason coverage had been interrupted, I would have been uninsurable for pre-existing conditions.
What I'd really like to be able to do is to have a discussion with the apologists for the status quo about the proposition that we Americans have the best health care in the world. I'd like to watch them cope with a sudden, life threatening illness that will require months of tests and procedures by going to the emergency room and handing the bill to the public. As it is, even for the insured, the delays are insufferable. Imagine being told you likely have a rare cancer that will surely kill you if not treated instantly and then being told you'd have to wait another month for another test and another month after that to be treated.
OK, don't imagine, it's too depressing to be reminded of how your sense of well being is as unfounded as a bug flying across the expressway on a Summer night wondering what those pretty lights are. Just go on thinking you will always go on and that the country you love to brag about gives a good God damn. Only other people get sick and besides, I've got mine so you can go to hell, you damn commie.
Even though you don't believe in all this feel good crap, I'm sending healing hugs your way anyway! I certainly hope you are with us for a long time yet.
ReplyDeleteOur healthcare system has been slowly degrading for years, allowing only those lucky enough to have kept their jobs or have the money to pay for exemplary health care - those that don't have that kind of good fortune, die.
I join Rocky in sending healing hugs your way. Hush, and just accept it.
ReplyDeleteI think that you're spot on regarding our health care system. For some reason, far too many people have purposefully deluded themselves into a believe that our system works better than most except for lazy, good-for-nothings who prefer living off of government handouts rather than work. I'm a diabetic and insurers classify me as uninsurable. State budget cuts closed my office and I was unemployed for 8 months. During that time, the state found easons to cancel my COBRA, after a stressful and losing battle with them, I applied for Inclusive Health under the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare) I was accepted, preexisting conditions and all, for a cost significantly less than what I had paid for COBRA coverage.
I'mback at work at my old job (the state found it had a surplus!) but I declined o accept the state health insurance plan. I prefer Obamacare. The cost is affordable and the plan isn't plotting to end my coverage. Of course, Mitt and the GOP are.
Take care of yourself and it's nice to see you around the Zone again.
Even with insurance costs to patients are out of control. We have what would be considered very good insurance through my wife's work. Last month, her doctor sent her to the emergency room with the suspicion that my wife might have meningitis. We spent 5 hours there and after numerous tests it was concluded that she had a bad sinus infection and the flu. Total costs for the visit (sans the radiologist's bill)...$8,000. Our co-pay? $1500. We have to also pay the radiologist's bill, which we haven't received as yet.
ReplyDeleteBest in the world? Bunk!
Best in the world........for the doctors. Everyone else, not so much!
DeleteCapt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteHere's wishing you good health. Even the dinosaurs know that good health is vital, but the "system" we have for insuring it here in the States doesn't seem to know it, so I guess it's even less sophisticated than I am. I was just reading an article the other day in which it was pointed out that a fair number of people who have insurance choose instead to pay cash for some services so they don't end up getting hit with those wonderfully good deals "negotiated" for them by their insurers. Just another way in which private insurance doesn't do what we'd like it to and why people who trumpet its virtues don't have the sense god gave a billygoat.
A few months ago, my wife had some spinal surgery. Shortly after the operation, we received a bill for the parts implanted in her spine- two screws, a little sort of cage thing, and a couple of small metal plates. The bill? $99,000.00. And may I make it clear, that was for the parts only- not the costs of the surgeon, anesthesiologist, the hospital, etc.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows a story like this. And anyone who cannot see how viciously out of control our medical system is has to be seriously lying to themselves. Yet millions of Republican suckers go on touting this sort of thing as the greatest medical system in the world.
Like you, we are very thankful for union insurance that means that we won't lose our house in order to prevent my wife from ending up in a wheelchair. Of course, one more time with Republicans in control of all three branches of government, and that will be the end of that.
Dear Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteTo use a tired old cliche: I can relate.
I know what it feels like to hear the words "cancer," "surgery," "tests," and "rare."
I'm with you, buddy. I've missed you and your acerbic wit.
I'm not religious; I'm a believer in medical science to deliver us from evil. My best wishes and hopes are with you.
Shaw/Joanne
Good luck Captain Fogg,
ReplyDeleteWhen we were all a lot younger, cancer was still widely viewed as a death sentence. Today, we have the Da Vinci machine, gentler chemo and radiation, therapies that make living beyond the old five years possible and as far as I know, even curing or removing certain forms of cancer. I certainly hope that is true. My mother survived cervical cancer it must be twelve years now. That said, many forms of cancer elude a cure to this day, particularly breast cancer.
I hope you make it bro.
And yes, I would have to go deeply into debt just to buy a new car. I suppose it is just vanity to try to pay off my mortgage to save my home for my children. If I had catastrophic medical bills, I would lose everything I have worked for all my life.