Sicko
Saw Sicko last night. Michael Moore’s latest documentary on the health care industry. As redundant as Michael Moore is, and completely slanted, he does bring up an important issue.
Canada, England and France have national health care. They are healthier, spend less money on health care as country because they are interested in preventative medicine. Everyone is covered, medicine is free, health care is free. This allows people to spend their money on something else. Yes, I am sure there are flaws in the system but there are flaws in every system and our current system sucks. We spend tons of money keeping the Insurance Companies wealthy. Insurance companies make money by declining people in need. As a rule, they are more interested in paying for your once you are sick vs. continual preventative medicine. Makes no sense to me.
Last year, the kids had flu shots. The normal flu shot wasn’t in stock so they gave them the flu shot that is inhaled thru the nose. No big deal. Our Insurance company wouldn’t cover it. That is crazy. So, it cost us $50 per kid. Now, we have the cash to pay for that but not everyone does. I called the Insurance company. The woman on the other end of the phone agreed with me it was ridiculous but in order to try and make them pay it would be a long tedious process.
Watching the 9/11 heroes be declined again and again for health care made me sick. It is no different than how we have ignored New Orleans. You have to wonder what is wrong with our system, our Government and the lobbyists that are basically being paid to insure that Insurance companies continue to take advantage of the system We seriously need to break down our entire system (health care being only one of the issues) and start again. Not only are Republicans being paid to not care about anyone but people who have the means, the Democrats take too.
Hilary Clinton was completely on the right track 15 years ago when she wanted to create a Universal Health care system. For many reasons it never had a shot but the system needs to be changed. The system needs to be simple not like the prescription medicine system for seniors that we have now. Every American should be able to go to a hospital, go to a doctor, go to a pharmacy and get free care. Each American should be taxed for this system based on their income. If you don’t make an income, you don’t get taxed but we should all help each other. In the end, it will better for all Americans not just the ones that can afford it. And for all you conservatives out there, if you actually think it will cost you more money, you are wrong. Your Insurance premiums are higher than need be and what is not covered for hospital care is higher than need be to cover all the people who show up at a hospital uninsured. This would all be washed away and costs would go down.
Comments (Archived):
The really horrible thing is that you can pay health care premiums all of your life and never have a hospitalization and then when you need services the insurance companies want to deny you the benefits that are clearly stated on your policy. My sister needed to be hospitalized in April and she pays $1400 a month for Blue Cross, an induvidual plan and has been on Blue Cross for all of her life. When you have to buy individual plans, they can be costly. Anyway, she was very sick. You cannot believe the static I got from the Hospitalists, in hospital primary care physicians to send her to a nursing home to die, while the specialists had a treatment to save her life. Every day, the hospitalists would put pressure on me to virtual kill her. I wanted to battle her illness not the primary care physician’s group on her case , the ApI group at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. I wonder what secret provider benefits they were receiving to NOT want to treat her?
If anything we need a more transparent system so we know why doctors don’t treat or order tests or needed drugs.
My sister also had a raging infection where I would put cold packs on her head for hours. The hospitalist doctor did not want to give her i.v. antibiotics, because if you are taking two different i.v antibiotics at the same time, then they can’t boot you out to a nursing home that quickly. (Finally, her boss gave my sister the needed drugs, but this waiting caused her much pain and suffering.)
When I decided that my sister should have a chance at life, the hospital rushed so many tests at once because the in- patient allowable clock begins ticking that they ordered a test(field vision test) that my sister was obviously incapable of doing and as they pushed her to sit up, the staff banged her leg causing such a major wound that she needed a operation, then a debriding where they nicked her vein causing her to spend the weekend bleeding in her bed from her leg that she needed 6 blood transfusion and cardiac care( she had heart failure from loss of blood) and plastic surgery and a skin graft.
If they did not rush so quickly this could have been avoided.
The subscribers are the ones that lose with our present system. The hospitals get paid no matter what and I must say they are paid well from the bills I have been getting.
If doctors did not agree to being paid to not treat back in the early 1980’s than this present system would not be in effect. Managed care came about because doctors agreed to it. It sounded good that they would get money not to treat a patient from the patient’s insurance company. We, as the insured, are paying the premiums to fuel this charade.
What a great synopsis of the movie. It’s sad that we don’t take a more holistic approach…both to the individual and to the collective. One of the saddest things I hear from clients in career transition is, “I can’t afford to leave my company…I need the healthcare benefits.”
How weird that we’re almost addicted to that benefit, and yet it’s focused on the wrong thing, as you’ve rightly pointed out. Not on keeping us healthy, but on getting rid of problems after they’ve already happened. I’m willing to wager that when people start getting sick of their jobs, they need more healthcare down the road (that happened to me in my management consulting days of insane migraines…which I no longer have). What if we all focused on well-being upfront, not on accumulating fast money, as the insurance companies do.
Preventative medicine takes an incremental approach, looking at overall wellness and what promotes it. Thank YOU for promoting that idea. As more of us look to creating positive futures, conditions shift. Kudos to you for being a champion of this approach!
With care,
Susan Bernstein
Life, Career & Money Coach
Work from Within, LLC