What is Your Health Care Story?
June 20, 2012 at 5:04 pm in Uncategorized by Kevin Mooneyhan 4 Comments
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4 responses to What is Your Health Care Story?
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For heartbreaking stories about the unfortunate effects of government run and mandated participation, ask any health practitioner or patient of the Indian Health Service.
In Dec. 2006 my 71 year old husbandDennis was diagnosed with having a kidney stone so lage that it had all ready thinned and damaged the wall of his kidney. The urologist felt that it was necessary address the problem immediately befor any more damage was done. The urologist felt that because of my husband’s age and other health issues ultrasound rather than surgery was the best solution. The doctor odered the procedure to be done within the week. However, even though time slots were available, my husband, because we were on medicare- blue Cross Blue shield, was told that he would have to wait over a month for the ulta-sound because medicare patients were only allowed the procedure on the first Tuesday of the month. We offered to pay out of pocket, but the surgeon told us he could not accept our money because if he did, he would lose his license. I contacted our congressman, Van hollen, but to no avail. My husband had to undergo a much more invasive five hour surgery. The doctor to my shock was reimbursed less than Six hundred dollars for spendng a full eight hours with us.the recovery of course was much longer and more difficult and painful, and the hospitalizaion had to have cost the tax-payers a great deal more. I’ve since had several surgeries myself, and the waste and fraud surrounding my own experiences with medicare was astonishing.
14 years ago, I was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. Tests showed the electrical system of my heart was so damaged that I had to have a defibrilator placed internally to protect me from deadly arrythmias. A doctor from England told me that British citizens have to survive a near death experience before the national health care system would allow them to have a difibrilator implanted, due to criteria established to control costs there. But my private insurance paid for the device ($25K). In the ensuing years, the defibrilator saved my life at least once, and maybe a few other times. I have survived long enough to finally receive a heart transplant, no longer needing the defibrilator. But, remember, if I was British, or lived anywhere else under a national health health care system, I’d be dead.
Last year I received a letter from my college saying they nearly tripled the cost of their health insurance plan because of the so called “Affordable” Care Act.