(no subject)
Apr. 30th, 2008 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistSEIZURE SEIZURE SEIZURE
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/042808HA.shtml
Lake Jackson, Texas - When Lisa Kelly learned she had leukemia in late 2006, her doctor advised her to seek urgent care at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But the nonprofit hospital refused to accept Mrs. Kelly's limited insurance. It asked for $105,000 in cash before it would admit her.
Sitting in the hospital's business office, Mrs. Kelly says she told M.D. Anderson's representatives that she had some money to pay for treatment, but couldn't get all the cash they asked for that day. "Are they going to send me home?" she recalls thinking. "Am I going to die?"
A growing trend in the hospital industry means cancer patients like Lisa Kelly are being asked to pay cash upfront before receiving treatment. Even ill patients without enough funds are being turned away.
Hospitals are adopting a policy to improve their finances: making medical care contingent on upfront payments. Typically, hospitals have billed people after they receive care. But now, pointing to their burgeoning bad-debt and charity-care costs, hospitals are asking patients for money before they get treated.
Hospitals say they have turned to the practice because of a spike in patients who don't pay their bills. Uncompensated care cost the hospital industry $31.2 billion in 2006, up 44% from $21.6 billion in 2000, according to the American Hospital Association.
The bad debt is driven by a larger number of Americans who are uninsured or who don't have enough insurance to cover medical costs if catastrophe strikes. Even among those with adequate insurance, deductibles and co-payments are growing so big that insured patients also have trouble paying hospitals.
and:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/14drug.html?_r=2&no_interstitial&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.
The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.
No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.
Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year. [Insurers can fuck off and die, preferably from cancer, for which they can't afford meds]
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/042808HA.shtml
Lake Jackson, Texas - When Lisa Kelly learned she had leukemia in late 2006, her doctor advised her to seek urgent care at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But the nonprofit hospital refused to accept Mrs. Kelly's limited insurance. It asked for $105,000 in cash before it would admit her.
Sitting in the hospital's business office, Mrs. Kelly says she told M.D. Anderson's representatives that she had some money to pay for treatment, but couldn't get all the cash they asked for that day. "Are they going to send me home?" she recalls thinking. "Am I going to die?"
A growing trend in the hospital industry means cancer patients like Lisa Kelly are being asked to pay cash upfront before receiving treatment. Even ill patients without enough funds are being turned away.
Hospitals are adopting a policy to improve their finances: making medical care contingent on upfront payments. Typically, hospitals have billed people after they receive care. But now, pointing to their burgeoning bad-debt and charity-care costs, hospitals are asking patients for money before they get treated.
Hospitals say they have turned to the practice because of a spike in patients who don't pay their bills. Uncompensated care cost the hospital industry $31.2 billion in 2006, up 44% from $21.6 billion in 2000, according to the American Hospital Association.
The bad debt is driven by a larger number of Americans who are uninsured or who don't have enough insurance to cover medical costs if catastrophe strikes. Even among those with adequate insurance, deductibles and co-payments are growing so big that insured patients also have trouble paying hospitals.
and:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/14drug.html?_r=2&no_interstitial&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.
The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.
No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.
Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year. [Insurers can fuck off and die, preferably from cancer, for which they can't afford meds]
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 03:24 am (UTC)insurance must die
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:48 pm (UTC)unconditionally.
it may remain only as trauma insurance related to voluntary activities like extreme sports
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 03:42 pm (UTC)i favor the model where cash flow is removed from the health care as much as possible
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 03:29 am (UTC)- I won't tell any primary care physician I may get this summer about my allergies, because then the insurance company might find out and deny me coverage forevermore because it was a "pre-existing condition."
- I'll buy my zyrtec, chlorpheniramine (I stack them at 1x dose zyrtec, 2x dose chlorpheniramine), and ketotifen eyedrops over the counter at an expense of probably about $2 a day, I'm guessing, if not more.
- I've already got a prescription for my flonase from a local, totally for-profit in-and-out-in-under-an-hour clinic called ZoomCare, where it's $80 to be seen. They don't communicate with my insurance and there aren't really any records, which is good. I also got a prescription for some antibiotics I needed from them as well. I payed for these prescriptions out of pocket, which for the flonase is about $2 a day and for the patanol which I haven't filled yet (in case the ketotifen works) is $2-3 a day. BTW, it's $75 to be seen at a local public 'urgent care' clinic which I guarantee will NOT have you in and out in under an hour (and no online reservations) and they told me on the phone when I asked about getting scripts for allergy meds in advance of my actual need, "we might prescribe you medication based on whether or not you need it at the moment." Fuck that.
- If the above medications plus wet washcloths in the freezer which I put over my eyes don't control it, I'll either order additional medications which I'm researching (mast cell stabilizers) from overseas with no prescription, or go back to ZoomCare and pay out of pocket to get a prescription for them in the hope that maybe that'll work. As an aside, I currently order all my psych medication from overseas with no prescription at anywhere from 10-80% (unscheduled) to 200% (scheduled) of the cost in the US.
- After the 6 month introductory period is over (in November), I'll carefully research my options and then likely go to a doctor and pretend to have started having bad allergies last summer in Portland, and I "just found out" about allergy shots (which I actually had when I was 12-13 elsewhere, but that was for different pollen and they don't last forever). Now if I'm a lucky consumer, I'll be covered, and I'll be able to get allergy shots which will very likely cure me of my seasonal allergies in this area for years in the future after a couple years of treatment. If I'm lucky. Of course, if we had a real health care system in this fucking country I'd have started immunotherapy after summer 2007 here and finding out I needed it, instead of delaying it because my coverage was uncertain (and therefore why start when there's no assurance of continuing), then losing coverage, and now having to play this game now that I'm "covered" again.
Does anybody else see a slight problem here?no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:24 pm (UTC)you should also try eating local-to-you honey, that helps a lot of people with seasonal allergies.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 02:26 pm (UTC)Also, I will probably try the neti pot this year, but I doubt that'll help my eyes which is probably the worst part.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 06:46 am (UTC)I had insurance when I was still working for Maui Divers. I had an ectopic pregnancy and had to stay in the hospital for one night for surveillance. To sleep in their bed for just ONE night they sent me a bill (this is AFTER they received the payment from the insurance company) for over $1000.
Jeezus christ, it cost more to stay in the dang hospital in a shared room with an old lady who was dying than to stay in a five star hotel!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:25 pm (UTC)the point isn't for YOU, it's for them to profit!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 05:23 am (UTC)This whole fucking mess is some sick and twisted scheme to... I don't even want to know what. But it sucks.