First World Health Care?

I’m on a broom about health care in the United States. The only folks who are happy with our current system are the ones with Cadillac insurance policies, but for common men and women, especially the elderly and under insured, getting help is a nightmare. Families are expected to become impoverished and overworked to care for chronically ill family members which actually damages their health and therefore puts the family unit at even more risk. Caretakers are forced to extreme measures to get help from the medical community and Medicare.

I have a friend whose daughter has been battling chronic Lyme disease for more than a decade. This devastating illness has robbed the girl of her youth as well as her health. My friend has been unable to work as her daughter requires around the clock care and Medicare has ceased paying for a home health nurse, forcing mom to care for medical procedures that are out of a mother’s job description unless there’s an RN after her name. Because of the word “chronic” Medicare will also not pay for prescriptions that improve the quality of life for the daughter thereby increasing her symptoms and making a bad situation worse.

My 86 year old aunt has Lupus. As a result she suffers from water retention in her legs making it difficult and sometimes impossible for her to walk. Like the chicken and egg story, one thing just exacerbates the other setting up a cycle of downward spirling existence. Twice last year she was hospitalized when she became unable to walk and then sent to a nursing home for rehabilitation. Each time she got better, only to come home and have the situation recur. It happened a third time and when her daughter, who herself has Lupus, fibromyalgia, and emphysema, had her taken to the hospital following a fall, they refused to admit her because her malady is “chronic” and Medicare doesn’t pay for chronic conditions. With a cracked eye socket and swollen lip and face, my aunt was sent home (in an ambulance because she could not walk) where she was accidentally dropped in the yard by the firemen, bruising her bottom, and told that if she couldn’t walk to the bathroom, to put a commode by her recliner where she basically lives. Her world had shrunk to a few square feet.

When she could not even stand well enough to do that and her exhausted daughter could no longer change and care for her, my cousin called the Medics again and had her taken to the hospital. This time she resorted to something no family member should be forced to, she didn’t go to the hospital with my aunt. She was afraid that they would tell her to take her mother home and she couldn’t face it. I cannot imagine how my cousin felt at not being able to be in the ER with her mother nor how my aunt must have felt at being there alone, but my cousin saw no other way to get help. Without hospitalization my cousin could not get her mother into a rehab center and get help. Fortunately this time the ER doctor realized the truth of the situation and even apologized to my cousin when she finally went to the hospital.

So this is the glorious system the Rightwingers so vehemently want to protect. Some would even abolish Medicare, thereby depriving recipients of what little help they can now get. Is this how we treat the Greatest Generation and our fellow citizens? God help us all.

Health Care Hoopla

I’m on a broom about health care. The well insured white right is engaging in fear mongering of the first order. It seems to me that the people who are screaming the loudest about “Death Panels” and health care reform are those who have good insurance and don’t care that the insurance companies are already deciding their health care. Just try to get a procedure or medication your insurance doesn’t want to cover. Even if they are willing to cover it, costs are still high.

My daughter-in-law is in a Catch-22. She suffers from bouts of tachycardia which sometimes sends her to the ER. While not life threatening, they can be terrifying, leaving her exhausted. Her last trip and six hours at St. Joseph’s ER cost $3,000, little of which was covered by her insurance because she was never admitted, just spent the day in the ER. Now she could have a procedure—an ablation to her heart nerves, some of which her insurance would pay, that would probably fix her problem, but even with insurance it would run her around $7,000 out of pocket. She is having to look into having it done in Brazil because their health care is considerably cheaper (and just as good) as ours.

My mother, who has Medicare plus some supplemental insurance, is convinced that Barak Obama is going to kill her and her friends just to get them out of the way. She’s perfectly happy with Medicare and the status quo, but the “rethuglicans” (fellow blogger Lorraine’s wonderful word, not mine) have got her scared spitless that if we all had some form of Medicare she’d be standing there with Sarah Palin’s mother and special needs son before Sarah’s so called “Death Panel.”

My youngest child has no medical coverage. He’s never had a job that offered it and he’s too old to be covered by me or his father. If he were to have a catastrophic illness his Baby Boom parents would probably bankrupt themselves to care for him. What sort of system is that? My oldest son pays $500 per month to cover his family and it does not include dental. That comes out of their pocket. It smacks of feudalism to me. If you are under or self employed you stand before the American medical system’s “Death Panel.” There ought to be basic health care offered to every citizen and then if people want and can afford more coverage, let them pay the insurance companies.

The system is broken. Why should the greatest nation in the world have some of the least accessible health care? What does that say about us?