A Patient’s View of the Senate Christmas Healthcare Gift

[Meshuga]

A Patient’s View of the Senate Christmas Healthcare Gift
By Donna Smith

So, all the great fanfare and all the king’s horses. The great and almighty U.S. Senate has spoken. I will have to buy private health insurance – forever, amen. The defective product that has left me wanting for real healthcare for all of my adult life is now a step closer to being the law of the land.

A lump of Christmas coal all polished up with sparkling rhetoric.

Here’s what the Chicago Tribune said this week, and I agree:

On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune published an exhaustive front-page analysis by Northwestern University's Medill News Service and the Center for Responsive Politics of how it was done. The main culprit: "a revolving door between Capitol Hill staffers and lobbying jobs for companies with a stake in health care legislation."

The study found that 13 former congressmen and 166 congressional staffers were actively engaged in lobbying their former colleagues on the bill. The companies they were working for -- some 338 of them -- spent $635 million on lobbying. It was money extremely well spent -- delivering a bill that, by forcing people to buy a shoddy product in a market with no real competition, enshrines into law the public subsidy of private profit.

As we approach the end of Obama's first year in office, this public subsidizing of private profit is becoming something of a habit. It is, after all, exactly what the White House did with the banks. Just as he did with insurance companies, Obama talked tough to the bankers in public, but, when push came to shove, he ended up shoving public money onto their privately held balance sheets.
This is not just bad policy, it's bad politics.

Now, back to my own thoughts as a patient:

I went broke while carrying health insurance, a disability insurance policy and a small healthcare savings account. And if I get sick under this mess of a plan, it will happen to me again. Little has changed except that millions more of my fellow citizens will join my ranks.
How does it happen to insured people under this plan? Easy. Step-by-torturous-step. Slowly. Like water-torture.

1. Buy health insurance at work or on the new exchange;

2. Avoid using insurance due to co-pays, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum exposures – not to mention lost work time and the worry about losing one’s job in a tough economy;

3. If symptoms are noticed, treat by internet medical site suggestions and over-the-counter drugs until no other option but going to a doctor are available;

4. Attempt to make appointment with doctor but first find one who accepts both new patients and your insurance;

5. Go to doctor and pay co-pay up front before ever speaking to anyone about medical problem;

6. Sit in outer waiting room for as long as required, missing work and worrying;

7. Sit in exam room waiting for doctor for as long as required;

8. See doctor for five or six minutes, if lucky, during which time you will either be prescribed some expensive drug to fix a problem the doctor isn’t sure you have, referred to another doctor who may have a month or two wait for appointments, be directed to get some tests done you aren’t sure your insurance will allow or pay for, and do it all sitting in your underwear or less...

(...)

23. Keep working – sick or not, keep working or you’ll lose that damn insurance if you cannot pay the premium – or you’ll be back out on the exchange trying to buy another policy that is cheaper and even worse;

24. Watch your elected officials claim victory and history as they work to make sure your kids and grandkids must suffer the same fate if they need healthcare in America...

(...)

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/patients-view-senate-christmas-healthcare-gift

[brokensymmetry]

1. So true.

K&R

[brentspeak]

2. The truth the bill's shills don't want the public to know

[depakid]

3. When the public figures this out- and they will

it's going to cost the administration and the Dems in congress big time- because they now own every abusive practice and medical bankruptcy that will be coming down the pipeline.

Heck of a job.

[quakerboy]

8. Obama had the chance to cement a generation of democratic rule

And instead we got this.

[ibegurpard]

4. K&R

It's shite.

[cutlassmama]

5. #8 is SO true!

[ipaint]

6. It amazing how some people are just giddy about handing their children and grandchildren's

health and well being over to the ins. companies.

[stevenleser]

7. Much of this is completely ridiculous, i.e.

"Not go to the doctor because of ... 'out of pocket maximum exposures' "

That one is right up there with death panels in terms of silliness. Then she exceeds it by claiming that Health Care Reform would be responsible for her missing work, as in, if we had some other form of health care, time itself would stop once one had to go to the doctor, and would resume again once you got back to work. The current Health Care Reform bill is, I guess, responsible for us not mastering the manipulation of space-time.

[quakerboy]

9. In terms of reality for those with less

its spot on. If I were to pay for a health insurance plan, I would not have enough left over to pay for a DR visit.

For the brief time my wife worked for a company that provided insurance, we ran into exactly that situation. In that case the company paid for most of the policy for her. The one time we used the policy, we ended up doing without so that we could pay the bills off over the course of 6 months. And that was for maintenance service, essentially a trip to get a prescription renewal for thyroid medicine. I can't even imagine if it had been an emergency.

In the end she was laid off, and we found out it was cheaper to go private pay at a local Dr that a friend recommended, which is where she is going now.

[jonnyblitz]

10. great article. k & r.

[IndianaGreen]

11. K&R

A great article and a must read!

:kick:

On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune published an exhaustive front-page analysis by Northwestern University's Medill News Service and the Center for Responsive Politics of how it was done. The main culprit: "a revolving door between Capitol Hill staffers and lobbying jobs for companies with a stake in health care legislation."

The study found that 13 former congressmen and 166 congressional staffers were actively engaged in lobbying their former colleagues on the bill. The companies they were working for -- some 338 of them -- spent $635 million on lobbying. It was money extremely well spent -- delivering a bill that, by forcing people to buy a shoddy product in a market with no real competition, enshrines into law the public subsidy of private profit.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/december/a-patient%E2%80%99s-view-of-the-senate-christmas-healthcare-gift