Health “care” in the US
The NYT has a sobering — even shocking — article on the perils of health insurance in the US. Makes me long for the good old National Health Service. And yes, I do worry that my health insurance company will leave me in the lurch if anyone in my family incurs major medical expenses.
…an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.
…
Mr. Yurdin learned the hard way.
At St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, where he went for two separate heart procedures last year, the hospital’s admitting office looked at Mr. Yurdin’s coverage and talked to Aetna. St. David’s estimated that his share of the payments would be only a few thousand dollars per procedure.
He and the hospital say they were surprised to eventually learn that the $150,000 hospital coverage in the Aetna policy was mainly for room and board. Coverage was capped at $10,000 for “other hospital services,” which turned out to include nearly all routine hospital care — the expenses incurred in the operating room, for example, and the cost of any medication he received.
In other words, Aetna would have paid for Mr. Yurdin to stay in the hospital for more than five months — as long as he did not need an operation or any lab tests or drugs while he was there.
4 Responses to “Health “care” in the US”
About this entry
You’re currently reading “Health “care” in the US,” an entry on Bodhipaksa's blog, bodhi tree swaying
Published: Jul 01 2009
I’ve been uninsured over 7 years now. This whole privatized system is rotten, and needs to be put out of its misery. Policies are more and more meaningless by the day, even as our sorry Congress continues to pander to these companies and their greedy, profit focused ways. And this, even though the majority of nurses and doctors want to see a single payer system, or at least something that reduces greatly the influence of the insurance industry.
As far as I’m concerned, there is little “care” in this system.
I’m self-employed and spend what I consider to be a ridiculous amount of money on health insurance, AND end up paying heaily for doctors’ visits and prescriptions. Lat year, when my daughter was ill, we were hit with an $800 bill for a 15 mile ambulance trip. It’s frightening that despite having health insurance I could potentially end up losing my home and livelihood because of an illness or accident. I can only describe the story I highlighted from the article as a scam — calling drugs, medications, and medical procedures “other” expenses and excluding them, while offering an improbably large sum for mere board and lodgings is frankly dishonest. It’s designed to mislead.
Even when the insurance covers things well… if someone gets seriously ill the company can suddenly cut them off… no warning or anything.
If you’ve had cancer as a child, or have a pre-existing or chronic condition you cannot buy Private Insurance, as almost none of the companies will take you on as a client, and the ones that WILL will exclude anything you’ve had before (childhood cancer, means no future cancer will be covered even if different kind), and exclude anything pre-existing or chronic.
We’ve had some experience of this. Our insurance company is refusing to allow us to upgrade our coverage (for which we’d be paying more) because of a bogus “prior condition” which is in fact something completely benign and a medical non-issue. They previously tried the same trick on the grounds that our daughter was adopted from Ethiopia and had previously had an infection (which had of course been treated a long time ago and is also a non-issue). As Michael Moore pointed out in “Sicko,” the health insurance industry’s term for paying for healthcare is a “medical loss.” Their raison d’être is to pay as little as they can get away with in order to maximize profit, even if it means that people die.