The USA Medical System

To try to help answer that Bruce, I know myself there have been times I've questioned doctors ability. And Lord knows, we've seen plenty of them with daughter alone!

Her first gastroentrologist insisted, INSISTED that we have a surgery of a fundoplication (sp?) and a G-tube. I told him in no way was I and DH going to go along with a surgery just because he demanded it needed be done. We went for a second opinion, and that GI specialist said surgery was definitly a last resort and we were not at that point.
Long story short, we ended up staying with that second GI, and she put DD on a different medication which helped her for the next five years. After five years, we eventually had to have the fundo surgery, but she agreed that DD was not a candidate for a feeding tube.
Even though DD doesn't chew as well as most children, she has no problem taking food orally.
In my opinion, not all doctors may know what's best for you. Good doctors are hard to come by, and when they do, they are keepers. But you have to pick their brains as well, ask questions and get answers. The ones that like to fluff you off, are not worth anything.

For almost 20 years I had a job that provided medical insurance for my family. If you think you don't have to worry because you have insurance, let me tell you for certain that you are being foolish. I HAD INSURANCE WHILE ALL THIS WAS GOING ON. They were screwing things up and the doctor would not see him or make a referral so he could have those diagnostic tests and exams - if you had read my earlier posts you'd know that the job was outsourced, I still HAD a job, but because of insurance switch and screw ups THEY DELAYED IT and not just by a few weeks. I'm not and never was talking about getting something for free. Having a job that has always provided insurance I was not negligent as you put it, that was part of the reason I busted my buns learning and doing a job I don't necessarily care for a whole lot; it's a decent living and I was providing for my family.

Whatever. I'm out of this now. The insuations and accusations of being ignorant and/or negligent mirror my experience with the healthcare industry when I've done nothing except the best I can, playing by the "rules" and within the "system."

Never critize until you've walked a mile in the shoes.

Hooray for you, Dandish. You put it quite succinctly!

We are another family that always had insurance through hubby's employer's. When he lost his job it took several months to get another. Then he lost that one. Once more it took several months to find another. This job is close to home & is a great job except they only carry insurance on hubby. That costs $20 a week. To add me would have been $80 more a week. Sorry, we can not afford that. Our savings was used up while he was unemployed. So, add me to the list of those without insurance. I did put the kids on the state covereage, but only use it when needed. There are no dentists nearby that will take their card so we pay dental ourselves. I do not take them to the doctor unless absolutely necessary even though they send me a paper every 6 months telling me they are due for a check-up. My medical bills get paid as we can. There is no way we can afford coverage on me & the kids with the price of things going up the way they are. Hubby's wages sure aren't going up. So, if I have to choose between feeding the kids & keeping a roof over their heads or insurance, it's going to be food & a roof. If that makes me irresponsible, I guess I am. We are just trying to get by the best we can. I do the best I can to keep us healthy & pray that God will keep us healthy. I know I have a large family I can count on too.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

Dandish, you obviously missed my point about early detection being key...cancer and associated metastasis happen in a time frame of years....not weeks nor months......I think most of the criticisms you raise are valid but I hear a lot of blame on the system for your DH presenting with advanced disease...and that is not the fault of the system and in many cases isn't even the fault of the patient outside of not s/he seeking regular checkups, heeding doctors advice, ect. in order toprevent and detect problems before they become irreversible.......

That's quite an assumption you just made there, buddy.

We both had/have regular doctor visits and checks up for the past several years.

He started having symptoms in January 2006. Went to doctor, was put on antibiotics. Symptoms resolved some but not completely. Feb went back to doctor, another course of antibiotics. Went back to doc, was sent for CT, diagnosed with diverticulitis, more antibiotics. This went on, the doc said if last course doesn't do the trick, he'd send him for a colonoscopy. In May, the job was outsourced, insurance switched. Paperwork up the wazooo. In the process had to switch PCPs, ins co screwed up entering my hub in their system. New PCP wouldn't even see him without card in hand. Phone calls up the wazoo, assurances things were straighted out, nope. Doc still wouldn't see him. Went to the ER. Another CT scan, IV antibiotics overnight, released. Finally saw new PCP, wanted to try his own courses of antibiotics, etc. FINALLY, FINALLY after begging for referral he had colonoscopy, diagnosed, colectomy three days later, chemo in Nov, radiation this spring...get the pic. The colonoscopy (definitive diagnostic) and diagnoses were delayed 5 (that FIVE) months because of THEIR SCREWS UPS and the doctor's arrogance, not bothering to gather CTs (I ran around retrieving records and trying to get him to look at them). There's more I'm leaving out, but rest assured, we did what we were supposed to, now, then and for many years. At the age of 45 they were surprised to find this. Colonoscopic screening isn't routinely done unless there's a problem until after the age of 50.

Again, your accusation of ignorance/negligence are insulting. I've worked in the healthcare industry for 20+ years, and I'm not stupid or lazy. Maybe you should go back and reread all my posts in this thread.

I think we've got good health care in the US, and I've never had problems with the system, but it's just way too costly. IMO, if we didn't have health insurance, medical care would be affordable for nearly everyone. I agree with RockyGlen that if everyone self paid it would improve things. Yes, I pay for my own insurance, and it costs me about $475 a month. I can't afford it and take it out of savings, but what are you going to do? If I had a major illness I could lose everything without insurance.

Jennifer

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-Northern NYS

no assumption about the cancer and its course and presentation.....stage 4 cancer does not happen overnight and it is obvious from your description that your DH presented with advanced disease.......


Hey I feel for what you went through but personally I think I would have gotten a second opinion before it ever went as far as it did.....especially if I had worked in the health care industry for 20+ years...but that is me...heck I've been known to have vets look at films before in order to check up on what is going on......you're very bitter about your DH death and it appears from your posts that you want to blame the system without acknowledging the advance state of diseae your husband actually presented with.....with 20+ years in the health industry I am sure that on some level you recognize that fact...

I never stated that you are ignorant or negligent....I did state that people without insurance and with a family are negligent in my opinion...and last time I checked I was allowed to have an opinion...

You don't an informed opinion though. My husband has not passed, thank God. He had stage IIIc. It was metastatic to 7/24 lymph nodes. As soon as he had any kind of symptoms we began to have it investigated. Yes, I'm bitter, and I have a right. I blame the system because if it had functioned properly, it may have only been metastatic to 3 or less lymph nodes, in which case the long term prognosis is very much improved, VERY much. Five months. This is all still very real and it's a fight we're still in, so of course I'm emotional about it. But my point is we have done all the right things, the system failed us; you don't understand the torture the inefficiencies and deficiencies and everything else within the system caused for the last year in this family's lives, and possibly the future.

I said I was leaving this thread and I've allowed myself to be baited back into it. Good luck to you, sir, and I truly hope nothing catastrophic ever happens to your job/insurance and someone in YOUR family, because even those who think they have all the answers occasionally get stumped once in a while.

Dandish I can relate with you in different ways. One because of my daughter and the medical care she needs.
As well, my dear mother had cancer and passed away from it just over two years ago. She went through a heck of a fight. At one point the hospital sent her to a nursing home, and she was only 69 and they thought she just needed rehab to get her back to standing up again. That was a farce!!! Only for her to be there for two weeks, while we as well as she was tormented. But both my parents are by far rich people, and all they had was Medicare. After two weeks my mother was sent back to the hospital via ambulance for breathing problems, and another doctor looked at her and was quite baffled as to why they originally sent her to a nursing home. She should never have been there.

So I agree with you wholeheartedly, that although you do the right things, you have to fight them so much.

My blessings to you and your family!! And my thoughts and prayers that your husband pulls through!

There is a Christian organization that does this. Everyone who is a member sends in their medical bills each month and the organization pays them. The total cost is split equally among all the members. I got a letter about it last year asking me if I wanted to sign up with them. At that time they said the average monthly bill for each family was around $60. I haven't checked on it lately so I have no idea how much the monthly bill averages now.

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well you can be bitter all you want but if you want to but that bitterness to work for you file some letter of complaint and follow through......now I'll share a little story with you...

back in April 27 my dearest friend and business partner in the world presented to his physician with blood in his urine......doc did the right thing and sent him in for a CT scan. Radiologist read the films and saw a calicification and reported a likely kidney stone....so when he went to the referred urologist he was asked a few questions...any pain? No. That puzzeled him and he stated kidney stones are painful and if it gets too bad go to the ER. The films weren't forwarded to the urologis so my friend made an appointment in two weeks to have the films read...earliest time he could get. Once he arrived there, June 12th, the receptionist told him that his appt. was canceled until July 29th and despite protests from my friend the receptionists would not contact the doctor and even told my friend that some people pee blood their entire lives. After that he calls me and I get ahold of his films and have two vets I know look at them.....the calicification is indeed present but no mention was made that the kidney was twice the size of the other kidney. Next morning contacted original PCP and he was horrified at what had happened....made a referral to another urologist.....two weeks until an appt. and also ordered a contrast CT. We got copies of the contrast CT's and had the vets read them again....something looked quite odd with the kidney. Met with the second urologist and he looks at new films and states that they do look odd but he doesn't do kidneys just prostates....another referral with a weeks wait...but this guy we are to see is a cutter so we are making progress. Met with the surgeon and he looks at the films and is stumped.....going to take it to the tumor board after he gets back from vacation....two more weeks. Once he gets back they decided to do a biopsy since things looked so odd.....unusual to do a biopsy with potential renal cancer...they were hoping lymphoma. Biopsy done and pathology report in....Sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma...a rare, 1% of cases, and surgery was scheduled for the following week. This was bad news because the contrast CT showed a great deal of fibrosis material in his abdomen that was picking up the dye.....feared and likely metastisis. Had surgery on July 27th..three months to the day....kidney a mess and yes metastasis....staged after surgery at T3aN0M0.......now upgraded to T3aN0M1 since it had metastasized to a small portion of the bowel...prognosis is crap....

In between time there was a lot of insurance hassels since it involved doctors outside of the group......a necessary evil at this time with the system as it stands......Now there is a lot of anger with my friend and his family....and me too...but we've filed complaints and are following up and results are being obtained. While we would like to have had the three months back it would not likely have changed anything at all.....the original films showed pretty much exactly what was found....late disease presentation has poor prognosis. Also given that this was a rarely seen cancer, like colon cancer in a 45 year old, it isn't surprising that it stumped many of the people we saw for treatment......

I could tell you a few other stories but the point is I agree the system needs to be fixed but I also temper that with the knowledge that for the majority of people lack of insurance, for whatever excuse, results in poorere health care by people not seeing doctors because they don't want too spend the money or haven't prepared for this eventuality and have no savings to even consider seeing a doctor....combine that with a healthy case of denial and I think you should be able to grasp the problem.

In the end health care was provided but prognosis is poor...because of late-stage disease presentation........a stage 3B colon cancer is extremely advanced as is Stage 3B.... obtaining an immediate diagnosis upon initial presntation is all but impossible and given the extent of your husband's disease, and my friends, those few months would have made no difference.......and in the end your, and my friends, expenses for surgery and treatment have, and are, being covered.......

...so I think my opinion is quite informed on this issue...!!

Hi- was this for me? I'm asnwering it before reading the next 60 posts so pardon if repetitious. I think medical care is so specialized we need a lot of control from and trust in medics, with careful oversight and as much patient involvement and education as possible. Yes docs do not self-police well so CONFIDENT OUTSPOKEN outsiders need to be on medical boards that review complaints and other issues of competence of docs.

Self care is great- but no doc wants to be sued for you staying home too long and getting hurt because you misunderstood some of our advice or got bad advice elsewhere. There is a good bit of science (for those who believe in science) in a good part of what is recommended by docs and those who go directly against medical advice should be carefully counseled about their risks and possibly inspected for being of sound mind.

However there's also a good bit of doing the latest money making thing by doctors either earning for themselves or not being sceptical enough of drug co. claims. So more govt money to establish what REALLY works and direct us away from even some doctor and drug co. recommended treatments is needed. A govt run system like the NHS in Britain rather than our private profit driven one helps in this. System wide efforts to ensure money is well spent.

Alternative care- well there are two issues. Permitting it- which should only be determined on true dangers or not to patients, not dangers to the current medical establishment's pocketbook, and paying for it- should insurance be required to cover something not scientifically proven to work, or that is not customarily medically necessary? (Of course as soon as the drug companies invent a drug for the problem they will try their best to make treating it medically necessary- witness erectile dysfunction!)

Jmm- I am AGAINST a lot of meds being available to folks- like antibiotics. In countries where this is possible a lot of bacteria are now resistant to most of the antibiotics sold to the public.

However there are a lot of meds I believe it is safe to sell to public and slowly drug companies (the profit motive has GOOD effects as well) are pushing to get many of these things out there to the public. Herbs and alternative meds should be permitted- with no promise as to their efficacy- so long as no research- or cases as it comes on market- of ill effects not avoidable or minimized enough with usual warning labels.

Sorry to harp on insurance, which I think you see here is the biggest issue for US medicine if not to you personally, but if all had access to health care we would freely be able to discuss meds we want to use with our GPs and get them if we could convince our GP of our need for them.

And my solution is mandatory health insurance that covers catastrophic and certain minimum things, from whoever you wish /can afford to purchase it from, with an expansion of medicaid to cover many of those who would be hard pressed to pay privately. Oh and no dropping people or higher rates for current illnesses- some shuffling or rebalancing for insurance companies to make up to them for having sicker patients. As folks above note how their $800 bill pays $700 to cover others' unpaid bills, if all (except illegals and other foreigners) had insurance bills could cost less and INSURANCE could cost less. And yes decouple insurance from work so it's more like auto insurance. Hey you know if it was your choice to switch insurance companies, not which company and having to switch forced on you by work, that the new company would waive all kinds of hassles and lower prices to the bone to get you to switch- after all if changing caused troubles like poor Dandish's noone would ever switch.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

If health care should be earned, then thousands upon thousands of hard-working people wouldn't be going without.

I shake my head at those of you who think people here in less fortunate circumstances don't deserve good health care simply because they can't currently pay for it. Geez, there are bums and leeches who go to the ER for free cough medicine and don't think a thing of it. It's the people who actually care about not buying what they can't pay for, who worry about having to owe others, who go without health care. The price for that is too high, and I ain't talking cash, folks. For what price the health of people worth caring about?

I hate thinking that some of you don't think that these people should have the privilege of health care simply because they haven't found employment that provides it, or employment that pays enough to afford it. Get into a car accident? That's life. Catch meningitis? Tough noogies. Child develop a rare life-threatening disorder? Too bad. Survival of the fittest indeed, economically or literally.

This is America. We should be smart and wealthy enough to take a look at how other civilized nations provide coverage, incorporate the best they have to offer with the best we have to offer, and make the whole darn system better than anyone else's.

When health care is so expensive that lower income families can't afford it (or insurance), it becomes a value judgement...only the wealthy are deserving of it. It is impossible for all people in society to be at the top of the income bracket. There will always be working poor. They are struggling to survive just like the rest of us. They deserve to live just like the rest of us. If health care were based on what people could afford, they would be able to obtain health care. But it's based on profit and is now so sky high that only the middle classes or affluent can afford it. That is a class-based society that devalues the contributions of the lower classes, even though many of the affluent have gotten where they are on the backs of the low-wage earners.

You don't make your kids go out and work to pay for their health care, nor a sick family member, nor the elderly. So some people you are willing to care for in a family or there is no cohesiveness in the family and it falls apart. A society works the same way. A healthy family is a group that considers all members of the family to be valid members, worth feeding and sheltering and tending when ill, whether they are actually productive or not...they don't kick the helpless out to the curb.

A healthy and functioning society is just like a family...if you let the needy become too sick to work, you end up supporting them or watching them starve. If you don't make education and health care affordable, portions of society become ill and a drain on the rest of it. If you help them stay healthy and educated, they are far more likely to be a productive part of society and help it to grow. And the ones that are incapable of, or temporarily unable to work and care for themselves should be helped, just like a family cares for it's children and sick and elderly.

If you don't think it's fair to have to pay for the non-productive members of society, then perhaps you shouldn't be living in one.

If you look at a map showing the distribution of liberals vs conservatives around the US, you will notice that the bigger the city, and the more dense population becomes, the more they tend to shift to liberal policies. That's because the more crowded we become, the more socialistic we need to be to survive as a cohesive unit...we are not individual families living off the land any more...we are communities that depend on each other for survival and economic growth.

Brava! Well said!

While I wish the health care system would be revamped to a more socialistic-type but until such time comes about what I don't get, especially from homesteaders who are supposed to represent preparedness, is the total lack of preparedness as far as health care and insurance. Do people really think they won't need medical assistance and care at some point in their lives? If they don't then why haven't they taken steps to make sure that they are prepared for that unexpected lump in a breast, an appendicitis, that accident in the car or on the homestead that requires medical intervention, or any number of possibiliies that are most certainly going to visit each and everyone of us?

To me it is unfathomable that people would put their families financial security and welfare at risk to meet short-term goals.......I think it is a matter of priorities and if you cannot afford health insurance then maybe you should take a serious look at why that is and do something to rectify the situation to protect your family.

I worked from the time that I was 13 years old until I was 53..then I got so sick that I was bedridden for almost 3 years, then "graduated" to a powerchair. I had health insurance through my employer for a whopping $400/month..I was offered Cobra coverage after I couldn't work anymore..right..$600/month premiums..applied for and got Social Security Disability..whoopie. most people haven't a clue that you're not eligible for Medicare with SSD for nearly TWO years after you've been approved..what the heck do you DO in the meantime? I spent ALL of my thousands of dollars in savings on medical care/prescriptions during that time frame..All gone, bye-bye. Medicare pays for 80% of what THEY decide is a "reasonable charge"..OK, so that means that you pay the rest out of pocket..ever price durable medical equipment? Ever price "Medicare Gap" insurance? $295/month and a wait of 2 years for them to pay a dime on your "pre-existing condition"..LOL..soooo, there you are, after working for 40+ years and your savings are gone.."poof"..and if you can afford to pay that $295/month, you can wait another 2 years before it will be of any use to you whatsoever. Sweet, eh?

My oldest son works like a slave..the company has no health plan..when he had a kidney stone the size of Nebraska last year, he couldn't find any surgeon to remove it since he had no insurance..ended up having a ruptured ureter due to the massive stone. THIS is "healthcare" in America. I'm not impressed at all. IMHO, part of the solution is to have SOME kind of sliding scale fee-based public medical care..Kansas City, MO has this..terrific system..unfortunately, we don't live in KC.

Disagree completely. The whole country is not my family, and if people actually took care of their own, as you suggest, we wouldn't be in this situation.

The sentence above sounds very much like you're saying, "Hey, if you aren't willing to be robbed and raped, you shouldn't be part of society. Other people have needs!" If their needs involve my exploitation, I can direct them to a sand pile and a hammer.

However you may wish to paint it, you aren't talking about a symbiotic relationship...you're talking about parasitism. You're talking about forcing some people to give so that other can take, who don't intend to provide anything of value in return. If it were a willing exchange, force would not be necessary. It really is the moral difference between consensual sex and rape.

Wanting something is not a mandate for taking it by force.

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"I'm not mean. You're just a sissy." - Happy Bunny

"I think you should be able to flush anything you want. Just don't call me when your toilet clogs." - BlueHeron Farm