<p>Seven weeks ago, my daughter was hit by an insured driver while bicycling. Her emergency room visit, ambulance costs, physical therapy, orthopedist (broken collarbone)… all covered by the insured driver’s insurance.</p>
<p>Three weeks ago, my daughter’s boyfriend was hit by an uninsured drunk driver in a stolen car while bicycling. Nothing is covered. He doesn’t have health insurance.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense that health care would depend on who hits you. </p>
<p>Well, as you note, your daughter’s boyfriend DID receive health care. Paid for by the rest of us with insurance, or in losses to the hospital, etc.</p>
<p>Healthcare depends on whether YOU have health insurance or not too. The boyfriend didn’t have health insurance. That has NOTHING to do with the person who hit him. Of course, if that person who hit him had insurance, it would have paid. But if the boyfriend really wanted personal protection, he would have had a plan of his own.</p>
<p>I agree that we need a comprehensive health insurance plan. I’ll have a college grad next year who we will buy health insurance for when he graduates. He has a chronic health issue and cannot be without coverage. The likelihood of him finding a job with health benefits is low. No one should be in the position of worrying about health care, prescription costs, necessary medical tests, and emergency situations like the OP’s situations.</p>
<p>About as much as a bull needs tits. Sorry, how is your anecdotal stories a valid argument for national healthcare? Would you rather be living in Britain where you would be put in a queue for the most basic procedures?</p>
<p>dmd, I hope that they are both doing well. We have a friend who was hit by uninsured car. In those circumstances our friend was hit while parked in his car. There were 2 others injured in that car. Our friend’s auto insurance was wonderful. He had uninsured motorist’s insurance, so his insurance covered everything, and the bills were huge because the injuries were very bad.</p>
<p>If you have no job, you can’t afford health insurance. Food and a roof kind of take priority. My daughter’s boyfriend’s mother is paying his bills. But the boyfriend has to make choices about his health care that entire depend on the COST of the care… not the NEED for the care. </p>
<p>In my opinion, whether it’s a car or cancer that hits you, you should be able to make choices about your health CARE that depend on the NEED for the care, not the COST of the care or whether or not you have insurance. Why does my daughter get better choices with regard to health care solely because the driver that hit her has insurance?</p>
<p>The US does have health care, as noted by the OP. Both injured parties received CARE. And thank goodness they are going to recover from their injuries. Ours is one of the best in the world, hence people from all over the globe come to the US for treatment. </p>
<p>This RN says a big, fat NO to nationalized <socialized> health care.</socialized></p>
<p>My brother lost both legs to an uninsured cabdriver on drugs. The cabdriver had no money. The cab company “went bankrupt” within a week. All this has left my brother holding the bag for life. He was “lucky” in that, at the time, he worked for Blue Cross. But needless to say, his job didn’t last for very long.</p>
<p>The very first question my wife’s oncologist asked after diagnosis was which insurance she had. The answer to that question made a very great difference in the kind (and actual quality) of care she was provided. (Because of the insurance she had, we were able to access the European standard of care protocol, which has an 11% better record on mortality, and 10% lower risk of reoccurrence than the U.S. one.) It is among the reasons that thousands of Americans are going abroad every year to access high quality health care.</p>
<p>Waiting lists in Canada for elective surgery are now shorter than that for cancer surgery in the U.S., according to the CEO of Aetna. This assumes you have insurance.</p>
In Britain if you have a non urgent illness -yes I admit you wait a long time - longer than you should. But in Britain if you have a serious illness that needs immediate treatment - Cancer, stroke, accident, - there is not a waiting list, you get treated, and you don’t have to worry about going bankrupt. My Mum was diagnosed with Colon cancer in late November on a wednesday and had surgery the next tuesday (I barely got there in time). My Dad had a stroke - wonderful treatment. My brother was hit by a car - covered - no waiting lists. He had chest pains - was admitted immediately for observation. But yes something like a ganglion cyst would probably be about a year waiting list.</p>
<p>Over here my best friend’s 3 month old infant son had cancer. The treatment was excellent. They did have medical insurance but their share of the treatments was tens of thousands. They had a payment plan but one time they went for a check up and were told to go to the nearest ATM and get cash to make a payment (it was an accounting error but you can imagine the added stress in an already devastating situation). When he would go home after chemo his Mom had to clean his central line and give him shots with little support other than friends and family. The insurance company would only allow the local pharmacy to give them one dose a day of the anti nausea meds to counteract the chemo effects. This scenario plays out daily in the US for people *with *insurance. </p>
<p>And when the Dads COBRA ran out (he was downsized just before the cancer diagnosis and was starting up his own company) they had enormous difficulty finding anyone who would insure the young cancer survivor. Some people genuinely cannot afford insurance especially if they work in jobs that do not have group coverage. </p>
<p>I do have health insurance but I am still petrified of the financial impact of a catastrophic illness. My husband has a lot of health problems and our share of the medical bills is many thousands a year on top of the thousands we pay in insurance. Our share of prescriptions alone is thousands a year. I actually decided to not renew one of my prescriptions because our copay is so high that something had to go and my condition is not life threatening whereas my husbands various problems are. And we have insurance.</p>
<p>The BF might have gotten emergent care, but he may not get any follow up. If he needed physical therapy, he might not get it. additionally, he might be hit with huge bills for the care he got.</p>
<p>actually, one of the biggest causes of bankruptcy in this country is medical bills, by people who actually do have insurance, which is often inadequate. I know a family who lost their home after their baby son got a liver transplant.</p>
<p>What CARE you get does often depend on insurance, as does your financial well-being.</p>
<p>My H, a former pediatrician who watched children die whose families couldn’t afford their CARE, is a fervent supporter of national insurance AND care.</p>
<p>As a healthcare provider, I am not as up on this as I should be, but I believe it is the cost of non-urgent care that makes national health care so ominous. I have worked in sysyems like I think national health care would become, and the level of care that people feel entitled to, just does not jibe with balancing the reality of what care for life threatening illnesses cost. This is for me, most blatant in mental health care. Which of us would sacrifice non-urgent mental health care, while dollars go to the seriously and persistantly mentally ill? I beleive there was a time whem employees just got “major medical”, but over time we came to expect and demand more.</p>
<p>Edited to add, non-urgent mental health costs should include the cost of psychopharmaceuticals, which I believe is a big part of the health care budget.</p>
<p>I am 100% in favor of nationalized health care. I don’t think that European style care is on the horizon however, so I am willing to compromise with national health insurance (for now). Some people don’t realize that medical costs can financially cripple &/or bankrupt even families who do have insurance. </p>
<p>Further, I am for employment based insurance that is tweaked from its current mode, and not for McCain’s idea of giving everyone a $5,000 tax credit and eliminating employment based insurance (the fend for yourself method). There is a bill that’s just been filed in the House, I believe, who’s acronym is SHOP that will take small businesses and self employed people and make them into a group so they can get the kind of group rates and coverage that large companies get. I am all for it. I also wouldn’t mind a system that more or less made the entire country into a large group and gave all of us the cafeteria plan that federal employees get. I had an email argument with a relative who is a federal employee who just didn’t get the advantage he had over Joe who owns the hardware store, or Mack the plumber. My relative thinks insurance companies already have economies of scale cause they issue 1000s of policies, but he doesn’t understand that the group rates and shared risk advantages apply only to identifiable “groups”, and not just all the various individual policies you write.</p>
<p>Another thought occurs to me, and that is you don’t just shop your health care based on cost per se, but in the US system you also shop for your doctor based on if his or her name is “on the list” of providers under your policy. D1 just moved to a new city and the doctor group recommended to us is less than a mile from her apt, but checking their website we discover they don’t take our insurance. They don’t take our old insurance either. Now we are on the Blue Cross site plugging in her address, looking for doctors w/in a 10 mile radius that are on our plan, and trying to get recommendations. It will all work out, but it would be nice to just find a doctor you like and go to them w/o having to check your list first. When my H had his double discectomy we were so grateful the best neurosurgeon in town was “on the list”. When you need your spine operated on you don’t want to feel like you’re having to go to someone you don’t trust just to get the $50k surgery paid for. Likewise, no one should have to choose between paralysis or being able to walk based on whether or not they have insurance or a house they can mtge to pay the doctor.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, why do you think it is the non-urgent care that makes health care so ominous in the US? When one of our Ds had an appendectomy (emergency) the total cost came to about $42k. That seems like a pretty ominous bill to get out of the blue if you don’t have insurance. She only stayed one night in the hospital. I actually don’t know what the average hospital or surgeon would do in such a case. I am pretty sure they can’t turn you away from the ER, but do they just save your life then put you on a payment plan for the $42k. My ornery relative blew off that example as no big deal cause he thought hospitals give discounts to the uninsured, put them on payment plans, and it is no sweat, but I would think it’s not so easy and could financially cripple someone. Especially a 20 something with not much in the way of financial resources.</p>
<p>The new legislation, SHOP, is the Small Business Health Options Program and has 45 co-sponsors in Congress (can’t find the bill#).</p>
<p>Here’s another example of someone who exemplifies the problem but doesn’t “see” it. A lawyer friend of mine has MS. She and her H are both attys and practice together. She is on medication that allows her to function but costs $1,000 a month out of pocket even with insurance. The insurance premiums for just HER are $1,000 a month. Her take home pay for their small 2 person practice is $2,000 a month. So one paycheck goes to the insurance co., the other goes to the pharmacy. She is an ardent Republican who thinks she is doing just fine and that since she takes care of herself, everybody else can take care of themselves.</p>
<p>Well, in my mind she is just darn lucky she’s married to a man who loves her enuf to take care of her, cause what if she was single? Her entire take home pay goes to health insurance and medicine. How would she live w/o her H and his paycheck? Has she ever thought about that? She would be destitute. This is the sort of thing why we need national health care. People are skating on thin ice and don’t even know it.</p>
<p>The key to most Euro healthcare is that they have balanced it by paying providers far lower salaries than they earn here. Would people still be willing to go to med school if the pay was set by the government at $100,000 or so per year?</p>
<p>Actually sometimes the uninsured get charged more. For instance the major employer on our town now has a PPO type insurance where if you use a preferred provider you have better coverage (meaning in $ terms - we pay a much higher % if we use a non ‘network’ provider - which we do occasionally if the network doc has a less good rep than the non network doc). To be a preferred provider the doctors have to agree to the insurance provider’s rates. So someone in this PPO goes to our family doctor the copay is $25 and the insurance company pays $35 giving a total of $60. If you do not have insurance and go to the same doctor you are charged $90. (found this out when my son when he was in college the first time did not realize he was still covered by our unsurance so said he was not insured).</p>
<p>We not only need national healthcare for people to be treated but also for those who need hospice care. We have far too many people who die in pain without adequate palliative care support.</p>
<p>swimcatsmom, as a provider, I see what your describing as the insured gets charged less. The $90 is probably closer to what the doctor thinks she should get then the $60. From the patients perspective this is a good deal, but from the doctors perspective…well just warn your pre-med kids. And perhaps anticpate that if national health care means all doctors will have to accept a “discount”, will your pre-med kids still be prudent to take on the debt and stress of a medical career.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap - Yes I think the $90 was what she got from everyone before the employer changed to the ‘network’ type insurance. </p>
<p>I don’t think even National health doctors in the UK are poor by any means. But admittedly they don’t incur the horrendous debt that med students over here incur.</p>
<p>My daughter is planning on med school and I don’t think the earnings aspect is part of her thought process at all. But I am already worrying on her behalf about the debt aspect.</p>