broken arm, broken healthcare system

[phantom power]

this report is gonna be short because i have to type it all with only one hand. hunt and peck. no capitalizations. that’s what happens when one breaks one’s arm.

and another thing that happens when one breaks one’s arm is that, after i had tripped and fallen over a piece of uplifted sidewalk in berkeley and got rushed to the hospital in a fire truck, i also quickly discovered how much our healthcare system has been looted and plundered by healthcare insurance company executives trying to score yet another million-dollar paycheck — at the expense of our hospitals, us patients and our hard-working doctors and nurses

it took forever for me to get seen and treated.

ouch!

the doctors and nurses and technicians at my hospital were all angels of mercy and friendly and skilled and kind. but there were only a few of them and only so much they could do in the time allotted to each patient — they could only spread themselves so thin.

“and how do you feel about working for sutter health, that big conglomerate that has taken over your hospital?” i asked all of them http://www.sutterhealth.org/

“sutter health? i hate sutter health!” they all replied. hey, me too. and every single employee that i talked to said the same thing. and they didn’t just hate sutter health. they really really really hated sutter health. must be strange to have 100% of your employees hate you so much.

http://my.firedoglake.com/janestillwater/2013/08/01/broken-arm-broken-healthcare-system/

[Thinkingabout]

1. A friend was visiting in France, fell and broke her ankle and leg, received medical treatment, had

xrays taken, saw a specialist, had a cast placed on her leg for the grand old price o $36. If she was a French citizen she would have paid $8. We have a problem in the US, the money paid for health care is not being used for medical care, too many people gets a piece of the pie which has nothing to do in caring for anyone.

[Enthusiast]

6. Thank you for your informative post.

We can only wish for a system as in France. And you are exactly correct when you assert that too many get a piece of the profit here in the USA.

[Purveyor]

2. I was in the hospital for 2 days 3 weeks ago thinking I was having a stroke. $28,000 and counting

it wasn't a stroke but Bell's Palsy.

2 days, no surgery. $4k MIR's, $3K CT's (3 times). $1k for IV I had once for saline.

Really?

[burnodo]

3. 4 hours in the ER, $2800

my high deductible plan paid about $1300

[Purveyor]

4. It is indeed insane. eom

[Nay]

12. 6 hours in ER for me, about 6 years ago -- diagnosis, massive constipation -- $6,600.00.

Luckily I had great insurance, but Jesus. Yeah, I had a scan to see if I had a blockage, but still.

[Tess49]

8. Damn! My son, an ER doc, diagnosed my other son with Bell's Palsy while both stood in my kitchen.

Hope you get over it soon. It can create some issues with closing your eyes, trying to eat or drink out of one side of your mouth etc.

[B Calm]

13. I've had Bell's Palsy twice now. The first time

I got it, it scared the living shit out of me.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. I can tell you that Sutter Health got hissssssss ratings long before this.

I had Kaiser, Mr. Dixie had Sutter, both from our jobs.
I spent hours fighting with Sutter of his hospital costs that were unwarrented.
Fortunately, his health insurance was only too happy to back us up.
He had docs who wandered into the ward, stuck their head in the door, said how are you, and then billed us.
THAT was on top of the docs who were acutally treating him.
Then he had to fight to get out of the hospital to avoid needless surgery.
( yeah, we do know for a fact he did not need it)

Kaiser was not too bad, but they managed cared me to death.
I was impessed with the eye exam, but the eye doc told me on the qt that he was TIMED per patient, no matter how much the patient actually needed. So he was forced to parcel out his time to cover longer exams vs. routine ones.

All of this was in 2002 or so....I can only imagine how much worse it has become since.

[Enthusiast]

7. Let's face it, people!

The US health care industrial complex is out of control!

Rein this fucker in. Make them account for this bullshit! It is legal thievery.

[cali]

9. thank dog that when I smashed my leg to pieces

almost 2 years ago, I was taken to my local independent small rural hospital. It's an excellent facility, with very high ratings across a number of areas. Fortunately for me, it's the hospital closest to Stowe Mountain and that means excellent orthopedic care.

I had no health insurance. I needed extensive surgery and I had a 5 day hospital stay. I had no problem getting financial assistance for my bills from the hospital. None. I had to pay virtually nothing.

[Uncle Joe]

10. Kicked and recommended.

I hope your arm heals soon and well, phantom power.

[onethatcares]

11. and while we argue with others about the need

for universal healthcare, they argue back that they shouldn't be forced to have any.

I wait for them to trip over an uplifted sidewalk stone, or trip off a curb. Then they'll find out the

true cost of our idiot system.

BTW, last year I had my appendix out, 2 days and surgery 68K. Insurance and hospital whittled down their
part. My deductible was non negotiable.

[sigmasix]

14. health care should not be profit driven. Ever.

The notion that for profit organizations can run human health care systems in a humane and fair way is ludicrous. I suppose this is the reason teabaggers love the health-care-for-profit model. (teabaggers love to hate victims of the criminally wealthy) Medicare for all is the only way we will be able to eliminate inhuman suffering and initiate a return to positive health care results. The extreme right wing has decided to team-up with criminally wealthy health insurance CEOs and health provider CEOs to maintain the death-like grip of control that the obscene criminally wealthy have over our health care industries. Americans needlessly die by the tens of thousands due to the teabagger-approved and underwritten notion that human life has a monetary worth, and that some humans are worth much more than others, hence are provided with golden parachute health care coverage.
Gotta keep the rif-raf away from the health of the wealthy- unless we can get the rif-raf to do the work in the hospitals of the criminally wealthy for minimum wage.

Why do teabaggers hate America's seniors and the disabled population?

[ConcernedCanuk]

18. Sadly, it is

.
.
.

why?

just look at this board.

A cat thread gets WAY more attention than a thread about health.

Sumthing wrong in USAmerica methinks.

CC

[ConcernedCanuk]

15. broken healthcare system? - did the USA ever have a good system?

.
.
.

Not that long ago, I had severe diarrhea, I mean SEVERE.

I was hitting the loo 25 - 30 times a day - a meal was gone in minutes, cut back to fluids, and still hittin' the loo for next to nothing.

It got to the stage after 4 days where just a TINY sip of water would result in the feeling of needing a major bowel movement in a matter of minutes,

and when I got on the jon all I got was a wee bit of blood - yep, blood!

I was too fearful to drive to the hospital, and shit myself along the way or in the waiting room -

so although I was desperately hungry and thirsty ate/drank nothing for an hour, packed a go bag and called the ambulance.

They took me out on a stretcher, I was that weak from not being able to eat for days, and lack of fluids.

Right into emergency, then for both a cat-scan and an X-ray with video capabilities.

Turned out my intestines were pulsing violently about 120 times a minute - twice a second.

Normally intestines do a gentle slow squeeze every 20 - 30 seconds.

So my intestines were just shooting everything straight through me at warp speed.

Dr. gave me some meds, guts settled down in about 2 hours, then they fed me.

I was so exhausted from the ordeal I cannot remember who brought me home.

POINT?

cost me NOTHING - not one dime.

Dis be Canada.

CC

[KG]

16. none of those problems will addressed by ACA. people will just be forced to pay for shitty care.

[davidpdx]

17. I'm sorry to hear that

I live in South Korea and I can tell you the system here is very different. I broke my ankle a few years ago and had to pay only for x-rays and clinic visits along with a set of crutches (that I hated using). I'm sure in the US without heath insurance it would have been very expensive.

I almost ended up in a similar situation with medical bills in the US around the same time.

While I have insurance here in Korea where I live, I don't have any in the US. When I visited home two years ago I was in the hospital for 5 days with pneumonia and ran up a bill in excess of $30,000. I had to be isolated in a room for five days and have respiratory care. Thankfully I ended up going to the closest hospital to where I was staying. In the end their foundation covered all the costs except for around $200 of external charges. I was extremely lucky.