Now, how many people have heard about Obama's latest blunder? Apparently, not too many, so I'm going to post about this myself. This is friggen' HUGE. There is a part of the latest Stimulus Package that will affect "every individual in the United States." All of our health care information will be available to the feds at will electronically. That much can be good in limited amounts because it helps to prevent repeated tests or unnecessary treatment.
However, it goes much further than that: the Feds will be watching what your doctors are doing to make sure they meet certain standards. And what are these standards based on? COST EFFECTIVENESS. They don't care about you. They only want your health care to be cost effective. This means that if you have an atypical condition which requires experimental treatment, your fate will be decided by people who have never, ever met you and only know what's on the papers they're given about you. Besides the federal standards for doctors, doctors will be penalized if they differ from those standards at all, effectively creating a uniformity among doctors.
I don't know about you, but this scares me. First off, the uniformity defeats the purpose of America being a capitalist system. If there's no difference between doctors, what would be the point of being able to choose your own physician? Why go to a doctor with a medical PhD instead of one with a Master's, because they all have to follow the same standards as set by the Feds? There is no point. All doctors are going to be the same. Doctors have to be "meaningful users" of this new system, but never is "meaningful user" ever defined in this bill: they are to be decided by a federal council of people we never elected on an individual basis. The vagueness is 100% intentional.
This will affect Medicare, Medicaid, and every doctor and health insurer in the nation. Hell, it'll affect each and every person in America, citizen or not! Also, this bill will hurt the elderly the most. Apparently, they have to "be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." Americans also "expect too much of the health-care system." I'm sorry? Isn't that what health care is supposed to be-- HEALTH CARE!?
If you ask me, this is going way too far. I could deal with the Feds having all my health care information on file, but uniformity among doctors, no experimental treatment. It's also counter-productive to positive economic or health care reform: the stimulus itself won't help the economy at all-- it hasn't and never will; and, instead of health care focusing on caring for people's health as it should, it will focus on medical assimilation based solely on cost-effectiveness.
Where are you getting that the measures are affecting the practice of the doctors themselves? The bill that your link cites is talking about Health Information Technology (it should also be noted that Bloomberg used a version prior to the one passed by House and Senate). It's for computerizing health information. The standards are standards for the technology to help ensure security and avoid duplication in things like payment and testing.
Does that mean I necessarily agree with the government trying to handle our information? No. Government involvement is notoriously slow and full of red tape. Is it going to be as efficient as those looking forward to it hope? Probably not. However, from what I can tell from reading the bills themselves, the sky is not falling.
Also, you do know Medicare and Medicaid are government institutions, right?
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Okay I may be completely off here,
but what does Doctor "uniformity" destroy exactly.
I would think people go to certain doctors for the given relationship to that doctor. Or at least that's what i thought, people like to trust their doctor and trust is built through conversation and well... a kinship of sorts.
So holding each Doctor accountable for not holding up set standards seems like a completely different subject from patient to doctor relationships.
You say this defeats "Capitalist" America" but we are not buying rugs here, this is our health care, I personally want any doctor i go to to be able to provide me the care i need as any other doctor would. That's just me... i want to be able to trust the person handling my care to provide me the care everyone else would get, or better. And this is not holding Doctors back so they can not do right by their patients, we are not dealing with some evil conspiracy that is going to take away any modern practices from us and stick us with shit.
To me, having the government keep tabs on me- even if it is just my health (nay, especially my health) is a big concern. In my opinion, part of living in a free country means that the government will never know you existed- that's the truest confirmation that you are free from the government (how can they control you if they don't know you exist?). Of course, we've already given up our anonymity through such evils as the IRS, which keeps tabs on every penny we make (go Fair Tax!).
This health plan sounds like a nationalized HMO. Why are we continuing with this failed health care policy? Rep. Ron Paul of Texas points out that the reason we got into this health care mess in the first place is a result of the HMO, a Congressionally mandated third party that decides what care is best for you, based upon cost effectiveness- largely taking the decision out of the patient's and doctor's hands. We see that government interference in this issue led us here, Paul notes, and yet as the solution to the problem we propose more government interference. How does that make sense?
And I totally agree with your other point- regardless of whether or not you think the President's new health bureaucracy is a good idea, why is it in this stimulus bill? It's not stimulus at all!
I completely agree about the evils of the "HMO." What is scary that the HMOs and drug companies basically owned our government. Now we have new players, they have to re establish their influence. This is good for them.
When I saw what "socialized healthcare" in Canada, Britain and France was like, I started packing my stuff, seriously.
In our system, the HMO's keep track of us far more than any government agency. Drug companies are allowed to inflate the prices of their drugs that people who have no insurance have to pay, while those with insurance can afford them.
We treat people who have no identities and no money, heal them, and pass the bill on to those with identities, and who pay insurance premiums.
Healthcare in our country is really gross, and the more I learn, the more I want to move to Canada, where no money is exchanged, doctors are paid a salary to do what is best in their best judgment for their patients. No paper work, no red tape.
Honestly, it is the HMOs who have so effectively filled the country with right wing rhetoric into the evils of "socialized healthcare," that we have willingly given all power and control over to the insurance companies, which are primarily interested in profit.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!
I have heard horror stories about Canadian and English health systems. Mainly from people I know that have lived in both countries. My co-workers wife is from England and she is glad that she is away from that health care system. After being seen here in America she knows how doctors should act. She has seen far to much pill pushing and half hearted treatments to know that Socialized health care does not work. My friend from Canada has told me that when he broke his arm in three places he went to the hospital to get it fixed and found out that the doctor that deals with broken bones was on vacation and none of the other doctors wanted to get in trouble by fixing his arm because it was not there area. so if you want to go up that way that is up to you.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
Uhh... news flash. All doctors are trained the same way. And ALL of them either have an MD, or a DO. You cannot be a physician with only a master's degree, nor does having a PhD make you a physician. A physician can also have a PhD (though they generally work in academic medicine, rather than in patient care) or a master's degree, but that really doesn't mean a whole lot. I mean, a lot of people go get a master's degree because they need something to give them a leg up in applying for medical school after they've already been rejected. Some people decide to become physicians after they've already trained for another career, and their degree may mean absolutely nothing in their practice.
Another news flash for you... all doctors already have to follow a certain standard. If they didn't, they wouldn't be board certified, or be allowed to hold a license. The government mandating those standards isn't going to change that. That also doesn't change the fact that every doctor is different. Mandating a certain treatment (while I don't agree with it) will not remove the personal touch of each of the physicians.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
Want the highest rated list to change? RATE those blogs, then!
On paper, sure, they're all the same, but doctors aren't just robots. They're people with their own individual experience levels, even though they all possess the same degree. I know there's standards for it already, but experimental treatments have never, ever been decided by a federal council of people who's never met you. THAT is what I'm talking about more than anything else.
Try Toilet! Hah, I love this.
I'm Libertarian.
I refer you back to my original comment:
Also, insurance companies have never covered experimental treatments. If a patient wants an experimental treatment, he or she has to pay for it out of his or her own pocket. The government is just being a watchdog when it comes to what it has to pay for.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
Want the highest rated list to change? RATE those blogs, then!
"If a patient wants an experimental treatment, he or she has to pay for it out of his or her own pocket."
... not necessarily. I have worked on experimental drug trials. The patients who volunteer for them receive monetary compensation.
I understand your point, which is considering the patient who elects to have an experimental treatment before it is FDA approved, but those people could profit from, rather than pay for, the experimental therapy.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!
A person with a particular medical condition, lets say a heart condition, can visit three different heart specialists and get three very different opinions on being treated. One doctor might recommend a regime of drugs, another doctor might recommend the insertion of a stint and a third doctor might recommend some sort of by-pass surgery.
Further, not all doctors are created equal. Despite the fact that their educational experience is very similar some are much better than others. Most are probably competent, some are exceptional and some are incompetent quacks. If it were my heart, I would be wanting advice and treatment from the exceptional doctor. That exceptional doctor would probably employ all three techniques at different times depending on the individual medical circumstances of the particular patient.
A government dictated regime based on cost-effectiveness might force everybody into one of these three possible treatment regimes and it would probably be the cheapest of the three. The one size fits all does not leave a room for brillance, personalization or quality. It is all about being cheap. The one size fits all approach to problem solving is so often the reason the government is usually so bad at everything it tries.
I hope their is a way to opt out. I'll bet anything that the elites will allow themselves a way to opt out. The cost effective regime will only be for us plebes.
All the new federal councils will be basing health care on is cost effectiveness, NOT the people themselves. Everyone, READ THIS. Because it's only based on cost effectiveness (after all, we supposedly expect too much from the health care system already), there will be more unnecessary death. In nations with socialized health care, there are forced euthanasias and less effective treatment of PEOPLE as people, not as economic figures, like this could have been. I'm not as worried about removing the "personal touch" of having an individual doctor as much as the fact that atypical treatments will be decided by a federal council who doesn't know any of these people. At all.
Dragonwolf: ... Do you expect me to read that whole thing? It's 400 pages. I hope not. However, I did a browser search through it, and so far it looks like they removed the new standards and penalties for doctors. However, the fact that such a thing was ever proposed still scares me. It wouldn't surprise me if it got passed in the future.
Try Toilet! Hah, I love this.
I'm Libertarian.
If you're going to go around spread FUD, then yes, I do expect you to read the whole thing, at least the sections that relate to the Health Information Technology portion, as that is what the topic at hand is about.
I linked you the PDF version (as opposed to the HTML version) for a reason. PDF viewers nearly always provide a nice little text search feature that works quite well.
Also, just because the page count is 400 pages, it doesn't mean there's actually 400 pages worth of text. If you notice, about two-thirds of each page is margin, and there are several pages dedicated solely to tables of contents. That means there's probably only about 200 pages worth there, and therefore only about 30-50 pages regarding the HIT legislation.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
...but you guys really just don't know what you're talking about. There is very little new ground being visited in the new administration's healthcare plans. I actually work in one of the industries that is directly effected by all of this (I'm a technology analyst and EDI developer working for a medical billing clearinghouse owned by one of the major players), and the reality is that all that they are doing is expanding already existing programs and promoting the technology needed to better integrate and streamline those programs. Doctors are ALREADY constrained by regulations that define medical necessity and the "correct" diagnosis models. Those same doctors are ALREADY having their treatment options controlled in large part by governmental regulatory committees and the cost-management rules that are applied all of the major public and private payers.
In reality, the patient-facing side of the healthcare industry will not see any significant changes because of these plans, except that MORE people will be covered, and FEWER people will be deemed "medically indigent." The expansiveness of these programs is scary, but the reality is that our current model of provider vs. payer results in elevated costs due to inefficiency and frankly price-fixing by the payers. If it weren't for the technology component of these plans, they would almost certainly result in slower, more expensive medical costs for everyone. One of the reasons that countries with socialized medicine (like Canada and the U.K.) have horror stories (such as patients waiting 6 months for an MRI) is because the morass of government paperwork makes it difficult to obtain the necessary pre-certifications to ensure that once the MRI is provided, the provider will actually get paid for it. The answer to that, of course, is technology.
The technology part of all of this is to move us closer to the paperless system that was ALREADY mandated by HIPAA, but with which the industry has been unable, or unwilling (there's a little of both) to fully comply. Basically, the payers prefer paper because it takes longer to process a claim, and they earn more more (from interest) the longer they can delay on paying a claim. The technology packages (like the one my company provides) makes all of that happen much faster. For example, Medicare has a 14-day turn around on paper payments. We can do the same transaction electronically and have the claim processed and payment (or an accelerated acknowledgement, at least) in the provider's hands in less than 72 hours.
TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.
Nothing to see here folks. Or so you say. But if all of this stuff is already required then why was there a need to write it into law again? Apparently, this is something new.
And by the way .... since you made a similar point in another thread ...... what does this stuff have to do with economic stimulus and why is it buried deep in the bowels of a stimulus bill? Why could it not have been subject to the Committee Hearing Process, subjected to proper debate and included in a bill that had something to do with health care?
Its not like Democrats don't have the legislative power to push through whatever they want. Why not implement their policies in the light of day? Could it be that if they were anything but stealthy that people would realize what was going on and that these fundamental changes to our healthcare system would be deeply unpopular?
Nothing to see here folks. Or so you say. But if all of this stuff is already required then why was there a need to write it into law again? Apparently, this is something new.
Yeah, it's something new. The government is taking the initiative to encourage people to actually do what the previous laws mandate by providing the funding and incentives to adopt a standardized, digitized system (here's the bill itself, as passed by both houses, for your reading pleasure).
what does this stuff have to do with economic stimulus and why is it buried deep in the bowels of a stimulus bill?
Regardless of what measure it is, something is bound to be "buried deep in the bowels" of any bill, especially one that's a few hundred pages long (the one passed by both houses, BTW, is only 400 pages).
That said, people will be needed to get the system up and running, that creates short term jobs. The system as a whole will make the claims process more efficient, which means it will cost less and (ideally) that savings will be passed on to the patients, which saves them money because they don't have to pay as much.
Would this one have been better suited as its own bill? I agree that it doesn't really belong in a "stimulus bill," but since I'm neither a legislator nor a lawyer, I don't know their logic for it (assuming there is any).
Could it be that if they were anything but stealthy that people would realize what was going on and that these fundamental changes to our healthcare system would be deeply unpopular?
There aren't really any fundamental changes being made, though. They're reinforcing what's already there and pushing adoption of technology that will hopefully streamline the process.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Nothing to see here folks. Or so you say. But if all of this stuff is already required then why was there a need to write it into law again? Apparently, this is something new.
As I pointed out (I thought rather clearly) in my comment above, these change are expanding already existing programs, and pointed out that the patient-facing side of the industry wouldn't see any significant changes. The government has ALREADY mandated that the idustry has to go to a paperless system (the provision was part of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). But, HIPAA didn't provide any specific provisions about how the industry would go paperless. It just said, "do it" and left he particulars up to the providers and payers to work out amongst themselves. That process has been very slow, and has stalled in large part due to the fact that the techology capabilities of the providers and payers are just not up to the challenge. These measures fund the needed enhancements and upgrades to permit robust and consistent electronic communication throughout the industry.
And by the way .... since you made a similar point in another thread ...... what does this stuff have to do with economic stimulus and why is it buried deep in the bowels of a stimulus bill? Why could it not have been subject to the Committee Hearing Process, subjected to proper debate and included in a bill that had something to do with health care?
And by the way .... since you made a similar point in another thread ...... what does this stuff have to do with economic stimulus and why is it buried deep in the bowels of a stimulus bill? Why could it not have been subject to the Committee Hearing Process, subjected to proper debate and included in a bill that had something to do with health care?
Now, on this point I can agree with you. While I can see the argument that healthcare costs are a pain-point for any family (or company) that is struggling to survive the economic downturn, and so it could be argued that since healthcare is such a HUGE industry that directly impacts virtually ALL of our citizens, funding these programs will have a direct impact on the financial health of a broad cross-section of the population. Ultimately, however, I think that's a bit of a stretch.
Its not like Democrats don't have the legislative power to push through whatever they want. Why not implement their policies in the light of day? Could it be that if they were anything but stealthy that people would realize what was going on and that these fundamental changes to our healthcare system would be deeply unpopular?
"Fundamental changes?" Like what? As I have already pointed out, the non-technological changes being discussed really aren't all that different that what we have, now. The programs are just bigger.
Its not like Democrats don't have the legislative power to push through whatever they want. Why not implement their policies in the light of day? Could it be that if they were anything but stealthy that people would realize what was going on and that these fundamental changes to our healthcare system would be deeply unpopular?
I ask you the same question I asked of scraps...If this move was so "secret," then how did you find out about it?
TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.
I ask you the same question I asked of scraps...If this move was so "secret," then how did you find out about it?
I certainly did not find out about this stuff from the the transparent political process we were promised by the Democrats where legislation would be posted on the internet for at least 48 hours before it was voted on by the Congress and would be posted for 5 days before it was signed by the President. This legislation was available for less than 12 hours before it came to a vote and unlike the common practice, what was posted for the public was an unsearchable image file of a 1000 plus page bill rather than the usual searchable text. Since it takes extra work to convert a word processing document to an image file there was a lot of speculation that this was a deliberate effort to make the process less transparent.
I also did not find out about it from the Main Stream Media although I believe FOX did eventually pick up the story sometime AFTER the Congress had passed the Bill.
It first came to my attention in the conservative online magazine sites I look at frequently. I can't remember if it was National Review, Townhall or Human Events. It was just an example of the things that were buried in the bill that were very difficult to find because the process was so lacking in transparency. It was then picked up as a topic of its own by some of the conservative think tanks like the Hudson Institute.
But I only found out about it hours before the Bill was voted on in the House which does not give a responsible citizen much time to take responsible action.
I'll throw the question back at you. If these changes are so innoccuous, why not discuss them in the CommitteeProcess.
"Fundamental changes?" Like what?
Maybe like this one:
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).
The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.
In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.
The change between "safe and effective" and a "cost-effective" formula seems like a pretty fundamental change to me.
Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey
Again, here is the bill your source used. Go to page 464 and please, show me where it says anything about about Medicare paying for treatments (or changes to such policy).
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
I read page 464 and almost everything else in the medical sections of the bill. I did not chase down all the references to other bills. I did not see any of that stuff. I feel like somebody lied to me.
...when you get your news from places like National Review, Townhall or Human Events, or FOX.
TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.
I am a news junkie. I get my news from a broad variety of sources which include those right wing sites. I spend plenty of time reading articles from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal the LA Times and I also mix a fair amount of CNN news into my TV news intake. I read quite a bit of news from decidely left of center sources (meaning well to the left of the NYTimes) on the theory that it is important to understand the enemy. I read the Economist cover to cover weekly even though it is increasingly sliding towards becoming a left-wing opinion rag rather than the excellent comprehensive and objective news magazine it used to be.
The truth is that ALL sources of news are biased. And almost all news sources are littered with inaccuracies and a fair amount of news is outright propaganda with a great deal of opinion being passed off as news. And if one does not look at news from a lot of sources, one misses much of what is going on in the nation and the world because the simplest way to deceive the audience is simply ommission. News sources refuse to cover stories that don't fit with their biases.
I've been decieved before and I'm sure it will happen again. But I have seen plenty of lies in fairly mainstream sources. I am usually able to recognize them because I read news from enough different places that I can piece together a picture that is pretty close to the truth. I am sophisticated enough to understand that a lot of what I read is not true. Stuff starts to look credible when you see it in several places as I did with this particular story.
The main source of this particular lie was Bloomberg. Bloomberg is a fairly mainstream.reputable source that is not overly associated with the right. They obviously failed utterly in their fact checking. It was an opinion piece but that does not excuse outright and total inaccuracy in the facts. I have to wonder if this was purposeful or not. It was clearly intentional on the part of the author.
That's part of the reason why I try to find the source of their information. With things like that, when in doubt, read it yourself. :)
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
There is so much going on and I am interested in so many different things that one cannot always look for the original document.
It was frequently reported that not a single Congressman had read the entire text of the Stimulus Bill when they voted on it. I have now read quite a bit of it and I bet I have read more of it then most of our dear leaders.
The truth is that ALL sources of news are biased. And almost all news sources are littered with inaccuracies and a fair amount of news is outright propaganda with a great deal of opinion being passed off as news.
But there is bias, and there is BIAS. All reporters bring their personal points-of-view to the page when they write a story, but not all publications seems to encourage or reward their columnists who don't at least try to remain as objective as humanly possible. Sources like the National Review are RIFE with partisan bias, and its hard to turn a page there without finding at least two or three outright lies. I USED to read the Review, but after the fourth or fifth time that I uncovered similar examples of dishonest reporting, I stopped. Now, that publication falls into the same category (for me) as The National Enquirer. Its a tabloid, not a news source. To be fair, I have similarly come to distrust The Daily Kos, which is equally dishonest, but on the liberal side.
TTFN,
Blackout
---
A question of love.
---
Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.
Thank you.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
I just wanted to throw in that "cost effective" does not mean people care more about the cost of care than the person being cared for. Speaking as a case manager whose entire job is to provide cost effective care for older adults, I find that idea a little insulting.
"What a crazy random happenstance!"
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Read my Blog!
when you are speaking about the caregivers themselves, in general.
But the insurance companies sure do love to make their money, and the government lets them, at the expense of taxpayers and health care consumers.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!
But insurance companies aren't cost effective. It makes absolutely no sense that they won't cover prenatal care, but they'll shell out the cost of the health problems that arise from not having prenatal care.
If Medicare was a little more cost effective, tax payers wouldn't be spending so much. No one needs a brand new wheel chair every 5 years, unless the one they have isn't usable anymore. Medicare has yet to figure this out. One of my members has irreversible dementia and was in a nursing home because of MRSA. When it cleared, she could have been discharged to her group home like she kept asking to do, and return to a familiar setting. Instead, the nursing home decided to keep her an additional 2 weeks for speech therapy, to "improve her memory and cognitive function." And medicare reimbursed them for the entire 3 days out of that 2 weeks they managed to keep her. I don't see anything cost effective about that, meanwhile, we're paying to hold a room that she's not using. Which is fine while she's actually getting appropriate treatment. But if the only reason for her staying at a nursing home is so the facility can collect on Medicare reimbursements, I'm putting an end to it.
A lot of hospitals are still using paper charting. Even the ones that have moved to computers are all using such a huge variety of different programs and systems that it doesn't really make any difference that they upgraded technology; there are no standards in place at all between facilities and that just continues the problem of errors, repeating unnecessary procedures, etc.
The Healthcare System right now is not cost effective.
"What a crazy random happenstance!"
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Read my Blog!
It makes absolutely no sense that they won't cover prenatal care, but they'll shell out the cost of the health problems that arise from not having prenatal care.
What insurance companies are you referring to?
I can't speak for other companies, but I know United Healthcare covers prenatal costs the same way they cover anything else, assuming it's not a pre-existing "condition" when a person gets the insurance.
A lot of hospitals are still using paper charting. Even the ones that have moved to computers are all using such a huge variety of different programs and systems that it doesn't really make any difference that they upgraded technology; there are no standards in place at all between facilities and that just continues the problem of errors, repeating unnecessary procedures, etc.
Here's a fun little horror story for you:
When I was pregnant, I had really, really bad morning sickness. It got so bad one day that I couldn't even hold down the fluids that the stomach itself creates. My husband ended up taking me to the hospital, but since neither of us were familiar with the hospital locations where we lived (we hadn't needed one until then), he took me to the only one he knew how to get to, which was a children's hospital.
When we checked in, they asked the usual "do you think you might be pregnant?" question, to which I answered yes. That right there should have been enough to send me to the correct hospital, but they didn't (inefficiency number 1).
After sitting in a crowded waiting room for an hour, we finally get a room. They ask for a urine sample, which I'm barely able to give (inefficiency number 2, if you ask me...I've been throwing up all day, I have no fluids left). We wait for about half an hour, and the doctor comes in, looks at me, talks to us a little bit. Says he's going to get me on antinausea meds and an IV (or three), since the test did show that yes, it is morning sickness and yes, I'm showing signs of dehydration and starvation.
He leaves and at some point shortly after, there's a shift change and the doctor leaves work (number 3). An hour later, my husband has to track someone down, because no one has been in to see us yet. When he does track someone down and asks what's going on, they tell him that they can't touch me because I'm pregnant (number 4). So, they're going to send me over to the right hospital. Hubby comes back and relays the message.
An hour later (number 5), the nurse comes in with the information and gives us directions. They say they're going to fax the information over so they can start the check-in process while we get over there. By this time, it's nearly midnight (we got in around 8).
So, we get over there and explain what we were told and they look at us like we're from space and dismiss us (number 6). We then have to repeat the registration process, and they ask for a urine sample (number 7).
It wasn't until after 1am that I finally got the exact same thing that the doctor at the first hospital was going to give me.
So yes, I agree, the Healthcare System in general isn't cost effective.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
maternity coverage, that is. Not all Aetna policies are equal, same with United Healthcare, which is also Pacificare.
Each policy is diffferent and covers different things at different levels. Its good to know your plan.
I have a different plan than my husband and daughter, just for that reason. I don't want to take the chance of getting pregnant without medical coverage. Its cheaper to have them on a different plan that doesn't include maternity benefits.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!
I agree. We're supposed to be a paperless hospital, but I think we paid something like 3 million dollars last year to shred all the paper we supposedly weren't using.
I do have to say, though, the electronic system we use to find patients who have orders for bloodwork is a whole lot more efficient than just printing out labels and finding the patients on the floors. It also makes identifying the patients so much easier.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
Want the highest rated list to change? RATE those blogs, then!
I am glad you are working in a position where you can spot these things and actually do something about it.
In So Cal, Martin Luther King Hospital, one of the few that serves our gang members, hence trauma victims, in Los Angeles was shut down because of Medical fraud. It is only of many facilities that were cashing in on the inefficiency of our system.
Basically, that means that hospitals were recruiting homeless people and putting them in hospital beds, giving them, 3 hots and a cot, and sometimes even $100 cash at discharge, just to collect from Medical.
It is really a sick system. Another reason I think we should just make healthcare like everything else. You pay for the services you need, out of your own pocket. People won't waste their own money on unnecessary treatments.
I love how the state of CA imposed a $.50 tax on smokers, and health insurance companies sued the tobacco companies for expenses to them, but they won't cover smoking cessation drugs. They'd rather pay for the cancer and emphysema.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!