What In The HELthcare Has Passed?
About a month ago I heard on the news that Obamas new health care reform has passed Congress. Yeah?
I got a couple of facts out of what I heard but not much, so I decided to look around the net and find the plan itself. I was going to read it line by line and then translate it to English.
I thought I did find it, but most of it was lawyer speak. You know, blah, blah, blah, and a little bit of truth or fact. OK I thought, maybe that’s all there is to it. Yet now I’m still reading articles in the news about it and or parts of it are still being debated.
So did anything get passed? If so what and where can we read about it?
New Guidelines on Breast Exams
This story is not exactly new. I wrote about this a couple months ago. It’s a shame that women are being told not to bother with breast cancer tests all for the matter of money. Of course to the insurance companies it’s more important to save some bucks than womens lives.
I’m not a doctor but if you were to ask me my advice would be to talk it over with your doctor and put yourself first. If you are in a high risk group get tested. I still think, no I know it would end up being less expensive to catch cancer and treat it early rather than to let it get to the advanced stage and try to treat it.
Michelle’s Law
Michelle’s Law is now in effect across the country. It states that a student can take up to a year off school for illness so that the student can remain on the families health insurance.
It’s named after a college student called Michelle Morse who died of colon cancer in 2005 and who remained a full time student to keep her insurance.
It’s a good law as I know first hand what a horror colon cancer can be and I can’t imagine having to go to classes till you are on your death bed. Kudos to her mom AnnMarie Morse and Rep. Paul Hodes.
Unregulated Fake Health Insurance
I have noticed the last year or so I am getting quite a few offers in the mail from supposed insurance companies that claim to offer health coverage that is affordable and that sounds quite tempting. However some of these companies target the elderly and make them pay thousands and then deny services or really only offer discounts on medical services that are not even worthwhile or worth the money.
When people complain and want their money back they often only get about half if even that and are told that the rest was an application fee. Two of these companies that are currently being sued are Home Health America and Consumer Health Benefits Association.
Do your research before you invest in such a company for your health insurance and as always, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
New Study on Health Insurance
A new study finds what we’ve all known for some time, most Americans that try to buy personal health insurance end up not getting any simply because they cannot afford it. That translates into three out of four people, about 57% said they couldn’t find insurance that would meet their needs and that they could afford.
About 47% said they simply didn’t find a plan that fit their needs, and another 36% said they couldn’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or had conditions that insurance companies would not cover.
They also found that people who did buy individual plans ended up paying a lot more for premiums and deductables than those people who had insurance through their job.
The numbers are staggering, people with individual health care coverage paid an average of over $6,700 , whereas those who had insurance from work paid only$2,250.
People need to have health insurance that they can afford and will cover the conditions that they need covered. This all seems to so simple and yet will we ever get there?
How Many Times are They Going to Research This?
You’ll all be surprised to know that the uninsured are in poorer health than the insured. apparently this was studied again. Did they think there was a mistake made in the first bunch of studies? Maybe they thought that things would change on their own, like maybe people who don’t have insurance would stop getting sick.
They are on Obama and his administration to come up with some way that all Americans can have some form of insurance that they can afford and that can be used when they spot symtoms of illness.
I still think part of the answer is to have more nurse run clinics for the most simple and obvious illnesses. As a matter of fact, a lot of major diseases start with the simplest of conditions. Nutrition and obesity for example lead right to heart and diabetes which lead to many other conditions. Think about that.
What Do You Think Of This Theory?
Please forgive me for getting sidetracked with my families health issues, but it got me to wondering why the hospital my parents are going to is so underpar, and the one we go to is so much better. Also still trying to figure out about the 2 to 3 month wait for the colonoscopy, and then it came to me.
First let me say I could be way out of line here but…here are the thoughts I have;
- We live in the suburbs of Chicago, my folks live closer to the city than I do by about 15 miles.
- The population of Chicago has been growing and changing for the last 20 years.
- The city’s hospital which was known as Cook County may have superb doctors and care but it’s a pit. I know this as a fact since my daughter had to go to the ER there a few months ago. My kids witnessed drug deals being conducted there, a pigeon flying around the room and people just camping out there for somewhere to go. They said it was filthy and disgusting.
- Because my parents live closer to the city, the population of Chicago is now in their area. Most are Mexican and I bet dollars to donuts that a great number of them do not have health insurance, and a fair amount of them are probably illegal. This is not a put down since I do not carry health insurance either because of cost. Since this population change they go to this hospital and the hospital has had to make changes to take in all these people. My parents waited over 11 hours last week for my mother to get a bed, and the only reason they got one then was because my father threatened just to take my mom back home.
So the theory is that the growing number of uninsured does not only effect the cost for everyone else but also the quality of care that they get, insurance or not. My parents have good insurance through my dads pension and I gather they cannot change their doctor, and their doctor works out of this overcrowded, overworked, hospital that is now trying to take care of twice as many people as they were meant to take care of. This possible future of health care for everyone should scare the you know what out of you, because I don’t see an end in sight. As weak as my father is, I wonder if he will survive the 2 or 3 months wait for the test. Any comments on this?
Why We Shouldn’t Detect Cancer Early
I am reading this article from the New York Times and I am blown away by what I’m seeing. I always was told and believed that detecting cancer early was a good thing so that treatment could be given before the cancer becomes so advanced as to metastasize and kill its victim.
Unless I am not understanding correctly, this article seems to be saying that some doctors and a government committee feel that some cancers can live and grow in the body, but if you are older you will probably die of something else before the cancer really becomes a health concern for you.
It further seems to say that by detecting it early you would undergo treatments that would prove to be unnecessary because you’re going to die soon anyway. WHAT?
I don’t know about anyone else but I do not want cancerous tumors anywhere in my body whether they are causing me pain or not. These doctors seem to be saying that they are affecting the quality of life by treating and testing the cancer, rather than the cancer affecting the quality of life.
Of course I have to ask once again where do the insurance companies and money fit in to all this. After all look at how much can be saved if we just all forget about testing high risk groups of people for cancer, and even more money can be saved by ignoring it and not offering treatment.
Honestly, sometimes I feel like I woke up on the wrong planet. See the whole article here and throw me a comment, I’d love to know what you think about all this.
New Report, Same Old Story on The Ill Uninsured
One third of uninsured Americans has a chronic disease that is not being medically cared for. People who are uninsured typically only see the doctor through ER visits when the conditions have gotten very bad and out of control. These patients will have complications from their conditions and die younger after being prematurely disabled.
There are about 47 million uninsured in the United States. The reports concludes that 11.4 million Americans that have at least one of seven major illnesses are not insured. They broke it down to 16.1% of 7.8 million with heart disease, 15.5 % of 38.2 million with high blood pressure, and 16.6% of 8.5 million diabetics. They also looked at other conditions such as COPD, cancer, asthma, and high cholesterol.
6.2% of insured people did not have regular doctor visits compared to 26% of uninsured who also did not. 22% of the uninsured had not gone to see a doctor in the past year compared to 6.2% of insured. 1.1% of insured people used the ER as their source of care, compared to 7.1% of uninsured.
Doctors can become frustrated because they know that almost all these conditions can be managed with minimal complications if they were given the chance to treat them early and regularly.
It would seem to me that the answer lies in insuring the uninsured, or making health care and medicine competitive and possible at lower costs.
C-Sections May Raise Insurance Rates
A healthy woman applied for family health insurance and was rejected because she had two c-sections. The insurance company says that woman who have had this surgery will most likely have it again and they do not want to cover it.
Different states have different policies on this matter, as do the insurance companies. The really bad thing about it is that this woman now has a rejection on her record which can negatively affect future insurance applications.
Of course the insurance companies don’t want to pay for this but they are saying that most of these surgeries are not necessary and are done for convenience .
I myself have had two and believe me, they were anything but convenient. With over 31% of children born this way this could become a big problem for women and their families.