Just finished watching "John Q".... and I can't help but think

[ejpoeta]

that while I understand this is an extreme example with lots of drama for the movie... but how far from reality is this movie!! You ahve a family who has insurance and their son falls at a game and is found to have a serious heart problem. He needs a heart transplant to live. But they find out the insurance has a lifetime cap and won't cover the $250,000 operation. They go try to get medicaid, but since they HAVE insurance and work, they do not qualify. No matter what they do, they can't get any help. Even trying to go to the media doesn't get them anywhere. So the father takes the extreme step of taking over the ER and demanding his son gets his name on the list.

How far from reality is this movie, really?? I have never had anyone who needed an organ transplant, and I don't know if a hospital can require a downpayment just to be placed on the transplant list, but I could believe it. And that the hospital would encourage the parents to take their son home to die.

I don't know what I would do were I ever in a situation where my child needed some major surgery to save her life and my insurance wouldn't cover it. Should the difference between life and death really be made by your economic situation??? ok. i am done now.

[ThatsMyBarack]

1. This movie makes me madder every time I see it....

And yet I've got the DVD!

[pitohui]

2. not that far, IME

the movie actually rang home for me, in my area, we have a number of uninsured, i remember in the early 90s there was a fad of people doing fund-raisers for un-insured neighbors who had brain cancer or for a kid who needed a kidney transplant, hell, so many i can't remember them all

what i can remember is that people simply couldn't collect enough $$$ that way to get anywhere close to being able to cover the costs

one of the last fund raisers i remember, for a $10 a head spaghetti dinner for a kid who had cancer, the fund raiser actually LOST money

so the scenes where the dad tries everything, sells everything, begs for everything and still doesn't have anywhere near the price of the transplant..very true to me

people just don't have that kind of money to give away, if we did, there wouldn't be a crisis to begin with

if you're sick and can't work, i'm sure every neighbor on your block could kick in $10 -- and the what? $500 you raised that way wouldn't even pay you for a tiny part of one procedure

costs are just too high for a honest person to be able to raise money honestly

what surprises ME is how most people are happy to just sit down and die, i've known people to actually just do w.out care (hell, myself included)

if there were any real john Q's we wouldn't be in this mess but most people won't go to jail even to save the life of their own child, it's just human nature, self is all

[Fire1]

4. I think you're right. The PTB in this country thrive on

'fear.' Fear of not only going to jail, but of losing jobs thus income, losing what little benefits we DO have, losing homes, losing all sorts and manner of 'things.'

[JeanGrey]

3. It isn't far at all. I had a transplant, the cost was over 500K,

and I was one of the lucky ones, I had Blue Choice and they paid all of it except $1400.00, and I had the transplant in another state. VERY lucky.

I understand that if you don't have insurance you have to have at least 1/3 of the cost or something like that as a down payment before they will even consider you.

The irony is, the first transplant center jerked me around for four years, I then got a tumor on my liver (very common). Even though the second center transplanted me within weeks and saved my life, after two years of anti-rejection medicine (suppresses the immune system) the cancer returned and I am now stage four and dying.

I often wonder if it could have been looked into the future to see how this would turn out, I doubt the insurance company would spend the money on me.

[ThatsMyBarack]

5. Oh, my--I'm so sorry.

:hug:

[JeanGrey]

8. Thanks. I take all the hugs I can get!

[ejpoeta]

6. what kind of transplant did you need?? was it a liver transplant?? if so, could the fact that

the transplant was not done before have helped cause the cancer??? i am so sorry you are going through that.... i lost my dad to cancer in april.

[JeanGrey]

9. Yes, it most certainly did. Had I had the transplant when I

should have, I would not have developed the original tumor that returned two years later in my lungs.

And don't ever let anyone convince you that the transplant lists are "fair". That is a total lie.
I was on the first center list for four years. After getting so sick I was dying and being put off and off I went elsewhere and went right to the top of their list, transplanted within three weeks.

When they say it doesn't matter where you are, they lie.

[JeanGrey]

10. Yes it was liver.

It came back in the lungs, is now in the bone, stomach and ironically, liver.

[ejpoeta]

11. jesus. how can these people sleep at night!

[JeanGrey]

12. A question I often ask myself. To add insult to injury,

they found the tumor in January of 04' and told me it was "nothing to worry about". By the time I got to Mayo in August the first thing they said was "you have a malignant tumor". As far as they could see it had not spread outside the liver (it had) and I still got the transplant. But it only took two years to return......................

And the hospital that did this is one in Atlanta with a supposedly fabulous reputation. I should have known when the year before they took me off the transplant list for four months because they found "secondhand smoke" in my blood I apparently got while attending a Christmas party.

You can't make this stuff up.

[Fire1]

7. I'm speechless. No words.

:cry: