Can’t I just get care? I got a whole grown ass person’s life to live, and i can’t be an expert in everything.
Are you rich? Then yes. If you’re not rich, then you need to suffer and struggle for needing to use valuable resources that could be used on people more deserving; like the wealthy.
It’s not that they’re hoarding scarce healthcare resources so they’re available for the wealthy. They could provide care for everyone, but then the system wouldn’t run at the desired profit level.
There is also a giant undercurrent of wealth ministry in the American upper classes. Since about the 1960’s they’ve been pushing the idea that God blesses good people with money and punishes bad people by making them poor. It’s mixed with the Protestant Work Ethic so they also see poor people as lazy and undeserving.
It’s a completely self serving and self fulfilling ideology but it makes them feel good so we all have to suffer because we lost the lottery at birth.
You say that, but when the Dems had a filibuster proof super majority in Congress for a handful of weeks over a decade ago, we got the ACA.
You can get whatever you want, but you have a $37,849.45 bill because you used the wrong door.
See, that door you used was operated by Attenya Healathus, not the Hospital, which is operated by Wellmeat (formerly Agape Plalauthis) so your care was not covered. If you had entered through the door (as outlined in your EOB) to the right, it would’ve only been an $800 copay for your splinter removal.
Oh ya, you can get care. And then you fight with insurance about whether or not that was the right doctor to use or if it was really necessary in the first place. But insurance won’t talk to the hospital and the hospital won’t talk to insurance so you have to talk to each of them in turn while waiting on hold every time. It’s a wonderful system.
It must be exhausting to be an american
And your doctor will have to fight with the insurance company over the phone for an hour to do a pre-auth. When my doctor wants to perform something or give a certain treatment not covered, he assures me he will make this long and stressful call. I really wonder what they are discussing and what goes on in these conversations…
What doctor has time to do that? I’m in Canada and I can never trust my doctor to have any conversation with anyone, at any time longer than five minutes at a time for anything.
The best tactic I’ve found if you want to get anything done for yourself or someone close to you is for you to do the legwork and make calls, contacts and literally hound people to do their job. If no one is there to push things along, no one is going to magically appear to help you … that is a fantasy that seldom and rarely happens, even in our publicly funded system.
You or someone who is capable should advocate for you every step of the way, otherwise you will just get lost and forgotten in the system … whether you are in the US or Canada.
I’m in Canada and I can never trust my doctor to have any conversation with anyone, at any time longer than five minutes at a time for anything
The best tactic I’ve found if you want to get anything done for yourself or someone close to you is for you to do the legwork and make calls, contacts and literally hound people to do their job.
This is my experience in the US as well. Also nobody knows anything about anything.
Doctor A puts you on a medication, doctor B doesn’t know until you tell them and then he says “he put you on that!? You shouldn’t be on that, I’m taking you off it.”
You go to have a surgery and say “hey guys, did you know that I’m difficult to intubate? Because I could die if you don’t take that into account”, they didn’t know.
“Hey guys, I have reason to believe that the insurance card I was issued in the mail isn’t completely correct, can anyone help me with this?”, 4 different people at the company that issued the card have no idea what’s going on, don’t even know about the policy tied to the card in question and think you must have accidentally called the wrong company (you didn’t).
“Hey guys how much is this going to cost?” it is literally impossible to say.
I have a doctor that actually cares. If I had one that didn’t, I would not stop until I found one that did. It’s mostly getting the insurance to cover medications that they don’t. The doctor usually spends the last hour of his day doing this, for me and other patients. You have to find a local doctor outside of a major city with less client base so they DO have the time. I am in the US. My deductible is very high but the medication I take is life sustaining and I can never pay for it. I have to do this every 6mo to a year: make an appointment and hope the doctor gets their way. Once they didn’t and that is why I am at my current doctor. There is not much negotiating a patient can do calling the insurance themselves. They will just look and see you don’t know what you are talking about. No matter how you complain about the symptoms, your financial burden, your family, or the fact of it being life-sustaining. Best to have a medical professional advocate. I have even tried with doctor letters and emails forwarded before calling. That is why I wonder what the doctor actually says that gets through.
Do you think your health record got that black mark before you took control of your health journey, or after?
(Mine is “surgery seeking”, apparently, as my old region has the mitigation history and the new region doesn’t; and one surgery every 15 years seems to be too many for them!)
What you are saying is generally true. The only real oversight in ensuring things are moving forward is us ourselves as patients. It’s our responsibility as patients to take charge of our health.
That being said, P2P is sadly a standard aspect of American medical practice. Essentially anyone in a direct patient contact position position has done them. In the clinic or hospital, it may be your primary clinician handling it but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. It can be handled by other clinical staff or a group of nonclinical doctors also.
You dont have to worry about P2P since it will get taken care of (whether the service will be covered by insurance is another story). Instead I’d focus on keeping disconnected parts of the system abreast of your medical conditions and current list of medications. Because health information is protected there really isn’t a great solution for centralizing this data yet so if you go to a clinic that’s on a different EMR, they’re not going to have all of the necessary information available to them.
Agree I feel fortunate to have found a doctor(and their PA, and their staff) who feels like my own personal swat team to get my treatments. I am not wealthy and don’t have gold plated coverage, I just found a winner.
It’s so much paperwork and phone tag.
I was the feisty little gremlin that fought with the insurance at a cancer-focused plastic surgery clinic. I got really good at stacking up all of the info in the first submission so that they couldn’t drag their heels on shit that was time-sensitive.
Preesh.
As an EMT I rode with too many people who were sobbing in the bus because they knew the financial hit that was coming when we got to the ER.
When I was a clinic assistant in a cancer-focused plastic surgery clinic, it was my job to fight with the insurance companies. I did prior authorizations for every surgery and they would do shit like approve the removal of a melanoma without requiring prior authorization, but performing the skin graft to repair the 10cm diameter hole required a prior authorization because the procedure code falls under the “Plastic Surgery” heading and they wanted to make sure you’re not getting skin grafts for cosmetic reasons.
I’ve had doctors lead me to make certain statements so they can more readily justify a given treatment that they know I need.
It’s a bit of a wink-and-a-nod situation.
It’s even worse if you’re part of an HMO, because the doctors are beholden to the business side, unlike independent doctors who don’t have a management overhead telling them how many times a year they can prescribe a treatment, becuase they’re doing it more frequently than other doctors in the system.
This demonstrates the major issue with socialized care, because it’s also managed this way. I’ve been in both HMO and PPO systems - overall they both cost about the same despite HMOs acting like they cover more day-to-day stuff. It’s just with PPO (independent doctors), I get care that’s more tailored to me and my wishes, I don’t get pushback from corporate, because there’s no corporate involved. I may have to discuss with my doctor how to present things so my insurance won’t push back, but at least the insurance company doesn’t directly control my doctor’s salary, bonus, etc.
All this crap started in the 80’s as business management orgs started taking over healthcare organizations and consolidating them, and turning them into profit centers.
cause of death: not knowing the cheat code to getting treated like a human being that exists for some reason
It’s hard as one having free (state paid) healthcare in EU, to imagine anything but just going to the doctor, and the doctor seeing to it, that you get the correct treatment.
No paperwork, no hassle, no bill.
I can’t imagine why USA hasn’t introduced something similar yet, but prefer all that bureaucracy that only makes the whole process way more expensive. Just to make sure some unemployed poor guy doesn’t get free treatment!!
USA is a psychopathic society.
The US isn’t a country.
It’s a business dressed up as a country.
(More like 50 countries dressed up as a business dressed up as a country, but then even that gets more complicated)
wtf do we call our society, anyhow? Just “capitalist”? Is that still the term?
imo Corporatocracy
Apart from also being an oligarchy, yes it is capitalist.
But here (Denmark) we would technically call it SUPER capitalist.
Because Denmark is also capitalist, but like the rest of EU, we balance capitalism with general interests of society. Where USA favor capitalism way more.
This is too close to sovereign citizen bullshit for me to take seriously.
“We” have been heavily propagandized into this. As a nation we’re a masterclass in being brainwashed against our own interests
Once upon a time, I thought the arrival of the internet would mean ordinary people would be better informed. But Trump being elected twice has proven me wrong.
It’s not used as much for information as it is used for misinformation and propaganda.
In the 70’s I thought better information would end religion, it’s insane how quickly we are getting absolutely nowhere.
I have come to realize, that I’m VERY naive in some respects. Hard not to turn into a cynic.
I can’t imagine why USA hasn’t introduced something similar yet, but prefer all that bureaucracy that only makes the whole process way more expensive. Just to make sure some unemployed poor guy doesn’t get free treatment!!
(concepts stolen from a very insightful reddit post from years ago) Nearly all modern conservative positions can be explained with two idea.
- Society is zero-sum. For someone to gain something, someone else must lose something.
- Class is defined and there should be no mobility for lower classes to ascend to higher classes in society.
So apply this to healthcare:
Most arguing against medical-treatment-for-all view it as zero-sum. So for most its not just because they don’t want some unemployed poor guy getting free treatment, but rather, “if the unemployed poor guy gets free treatment, then treatment won’t be available at some point in the future when I need it”. This is silly of course.
For others arguing against medical-treatment-for-all, the suffering is the point. The unemployed poor guy should suffer because that is his station in life. A life of comfort is reserved for those of higher classes. They believe, alleviating his suffering would go against the class he’s in and should in. This is, of course, also silly.
They also use the higher taxes argument. They lean on the decades of anti tax propaganda and tell people your taxes have to go up for it to work. Of course your taxes go up by less than you save on premiums and deductibles, but they just shout, “taxes are theft” over anyone pointing that out.
They also use the higher taxes argument. They lean on the decades of anti tax propaganda and tell people your taxes have to go up for it to work.
This is a rephrasing of their zero sum argument. As in “for the poor to gain healthcare, you, the middle class, must lose wealth”.
Wait until you find out that we actually get money deducted from our paychecks, a good some of money under “Medicare”, that we don’t get. We just pay for it on top of our monthly premiums for the insurance.
Of all the things to be angry at re: health insurance, this ain’t it. You are not mad at Medicare existing. Like you do realize that 99% of people on this site want what you just described, but for all health care at all ages, right?
There are plenty of issues with Medicare, but what you just described is probably the easiest part of this whole situation for a European to understand due to its progressive nature.
I think it’s pretty reasonable to be pissed about paying for something you can’t use. Especially if they’re in the same boat I am where their taxes are literally the difference between owning a home or not.
Right, but what do you do when someone who works less, or isn’t as talented or smart, as you gets the same or better healthcare!?
Edit: /s
It’s money. It’s specifically a video of a white man with an expensive suit dancing in a rain of hundred dollar bills while the chorus to Money Money Money plays.
Politicians know the system is broke but they benefit from the money and have government sponsored top tier healthcare.
It’s hard as one having free (state paid) healthcare in EU
Your health care is neither free nor “state paid”, you pay for it, the government just takes the money before it ever arrives in your bank account. You should know how much you pay, and how the service compares to a comparable commercial health plan.
Oh for fucks sake, I wrote state paid exactly to prevent this bullshit. Obviously we pay the state through taxes.
This is such a tired argument, and doesn’t change that single payer or whatever words Americans use to describe what we in Europe merely call healthcare, but healthcare for all is so much cheaper to run, that the money saved easily cover the poor that can’t afford to pay if they had to.
Your moronic parroting of extreme right wing talking points have zero impact on a reality that is way different from what you try to manipulate people into thinking.
Obviously we pay the state through taxes.
So… you agree with me, but still attack me?
