You want your Death Panels - read about this horrible case from DE Blue Cross

[LynneSin]

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100326/NEWS02/3260389/Senate-panel-questions-Del.-Blue-Cross

U.S. Senate committee questions Delaware Blue Cross
Insurer backs off denials of requests for stress tests
By JONATHAN STARKEY • The News Journal • March 26, 2010

U.S. Senate committee is investigating Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware for refusing to cover cardiac imaging tests for patients with classic symptoms of heart disease whose doctors believed the tests were necessary to avoid potential heart attacks.

Alerted by news accounts in The News Journal this week, Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, sent a letter to BCBSD on Thursday requesting documentation of cardiac imaging denials over the last five years.

In the letter to Timothy Constantine, BCBSD's chief executive officer, Rockefeller asked for information on procedures used to evaluate requests for the advanced stress tests and probed the insurer's contract relationship with a Tennessee company, MedSolutions, that handles claims submitted in advance of the tests.

<<<snip>>>>

"Denying medically necessary services to patients showing signs of serious heart disease is not acceptable," Rockefeller said. "That's not how health care should be delivered in our country. American consumers deserve better, and they are going to get it as health care reforms are implemented over the coming months and years."

<<<snip>>>>

A Lewes cardiologist, Dr. Georges Dahr, said eight or nine of his patients have been denied coverage for stress tests by MedSolutions just in the last two months. The nuclear stress tests call for an injection of a radioactive material followed by exercise on a treadmill, with imaging technology used to identify blockages with a high degree of accuracy.


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That's your "Death Panels" - when non-medical bureaucrats are making medical decisions - denying tests & coverage that could save lives.

If anything HCR will prevent these death panels.

[hayu_lol]

1. There are two kinds of these stress tests...

one is the treadmill while being closely monitored and the other is a chemically-induced stress test that will show the same results while being monitored.

I had the chemically-induced test. The effects of stress feel like a sheet of iron plate has been placed on your chest(varying weights). Patient is lying down for this one.

[nykym]

2. What really troubles me

is the claim of the right wing that the Government is coming between them and their doctors - But in reality (and that may be the real reason 'Reality'), It is, has been, and will be (when they can get away with it now) the insurance industry coming between a patient and their doctor.