Can’t I just get care? I got a whole grown ass person’s life to live, and i can’t be an expert in everything.
Are you rich? Then yes. If you’re not rich, then you need to suffer and struggle for needing to use valuable resources that could be used on people more deserving; like the wealthy.
It’s not that they’re hoarding scarce healthcare resources so they’re available for the wealthy. They could provide care for everyone, but then the system wouldn’t run at the desired profit level.
i didn’t say healthcare resources. money is a resource and you must give it to your betters if you want access to affordable healthcare. they are hoarding one resource by denying access to another.
More that people wouldn’t be reliant on shitty jobs for healthcare. The current state of affairs ensures obedient workers.
In most countries you can, yes.
It must be exhausting to be an american
it most certainly is.
Gestures Broadly at Everything
Anyone taking refugees yet?
They (Americans) deserve it honestly.
- They worship capitalism
- Gleefuly joke about killing communists (via helicopters)
- Do not bat an eye when US govt invades 3rd world countries
- Rig international organizations in their favor
- Impose their will & turn other countries into a puppet states
- Fund Coups & Terrorists & bomb & sanctions on other emerging (As in developing) countries to destabilize them
- Stage Regime-change operations
- Greedy & Resource-Hoarding Nation with a mostly Selfish & Solipsistic Population
- & you rescued Nazis
- Not to mention how willing people are in joining the Military-industrial complex
I could go on & on
We 100% do.
My christian mother can’t wait for society to burn and Jesus to come back.
Let it. Fucking hell. I’m so tired of protecting these fucking idiots. Good riddance.
I do not. Many of my friends don’t either. Do we still “deserve it”?
I do not. Many of my friends don’t either. Do we still “deserve it”?
cause of death: not knowing the cheat code to getting treated like a human being that exists for some reason
And your doctor will have to fight with the insurance company over the phone for an hour to do a pre-auth. When my doctor wants to perform something or give a certain treatment not covered, he assures me he will make this long and stressful call. I really wonder what they are discussing and what goes on in these conversations…
What doctor has time to do that? I’m in Canada and I can never trust my doctor to have any conversation with anyone, at any time longer than five minutes at a time for anything.
The best tactic I’ve found if you want to get anything done for yourself or someone close to you is for you to do the legwork and make calls, contacts and literally hound people to do their job. If no one is there to push things along, no one is going to magically appear to help you … that is a fantasy that seldom and rarely happens, even in our publicly funded system.
You or someone who is capable should advocate for you every step of the way, otherwise you will just get lost and forgotten in the system … whether you are in the US or Canada.
I’m in Canada and I can never trust my doctor to have any conversation with anyone, at any time longer than five minutes at a time for anything
The best tactic I’ve found if you want to get anything done for yourself or someone close to you is for you to do the legwork and make calls, contacts and literally hound people to do their job.
This is my experience in the US as well. Also nobody knows anything about anything.
Doctor A puts you on a medication, doctor B doesn’t know until you tell them and then he says “he put you on that!? You shouldn’t be on that, I’m taking you off it.”
You go to have a surgery and say “hey guys, did you know that I’m difficult to intubate? Because I could die if you don’t take that into account”, they didn’t know.
“Hey guys, I have reason to believe that the insurance card I was issued in the mail isn’t completely correct, can anyone help me with this?”, 4 different people at the company that issued the card have no idea what’s going on, don’t even know about the policy tied to the card in question and think you must have accidentally called the wrong company (you didn’t).
“Hey guys how much is this going to cost?” it is literally impossible to say.
I have a doctor that actually cares. If I had one that didn’t, I would not stop until I found one that did. It’s mostly getting the insurance to cover medications that they don’t. The doctor usually spends the last hour of his day doing this, for me and other patients. You have to find a local doctor outside of a major city with less client base so they DO have the time. I am in the US. My deductible is very high but the medication I take is life sustaining and I can never pay for it. I have to do this every 6mo to a year: make an appointment and hope the doctor gets their way. Once they didn’t and that is why I am at my current doctor. There is not much negotiating a patient can do calling the insurance themselves. They will just look and see you don’t know what you are talking about. No matter how you complain about the symptoms, your financial burden, your family, or the fact of it being life-sustaining. Best to have a medical professional advocate. I have even tried with doctor letters and emails forwarded before calling. That is why I wonder what the doctor actually says that gets through.
Do you think your health record got that black mark before you took control of your health journey, or after?
(Mine is “surgery seeking”, apparently, as my old region has the mitigation history and the new region doesn’t; and one surgery every 15 years seems to be too many for them!)
What you are saying is generally true. The only real oversight in ensuring things are moving forward is us ourselves as patients. It’s our responsibility as patients to take charge of our health.
That being said, P2P is sadly a standard aspect of American medical practice. Essentially anyone in a direct patient contact position position has done them. In the clinic or hospital, it may be your primary clinician handling it but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. It can be handled by other clinical staff or a group of nonclinical doctors also.
You dont have to worry about P2P since it will get taken care of (whether the service will be covered by insurance is another story). Instead I’d focus on keeping disconnected parts of the system abreast of your medical conditions and current list of medications. Because health information is protected there really isn’t a great solution for centralizing this data yet so if you go to a clinic that’s on a different EMR, they’re not going to have all of the necessary information available to them.
Agree I feel fortunate to have found a doctor(and their PA, and their staff) who feels like my own personal swat team to get my treatments. I am not wealthy and don’t have gold plated coverage, I just found a winner.
It’s so much paperwork and phone tag.
I was the feisty little gremlin that fought with the insurance at a cancer-focused plastic surgery clinic. I got really good at stacking up all of the info in the first submission so that they couldn’t drag their heels on shit that was time-sensitive.
Preesh.
As an EMT I rode with too many people who were sobbing in the bus because they knew the financial hit that was coming when we got to the ER.
I’m in medical school now and looking at either emergency med or family med, and either way, I am going to be exceedingly careful about how I construct my notes, diagnoses, evaluations, and treatment plans to leave as few cracks as possible for the insurance companies to try to weasel their way into.
I would encourage you to CAREFULLY and WITH DETAIL listen to your senior tutors (senior grisled paramedics, charge nurses, etc). They have a very particular line to walk and you can blow the show if you don’t learn the language.
It’s performative…everyone in the equation wants the patient to get the best, but if you haul off and make it obvious, they may be screwed.
Not saying you’d do that, but it’s a new world of…bullshit nuance.
Edit and if they ever give you a knowing look, and ask you to check the blinker fluid, or if the vending machine is stocked with saline, nod, and go “check”. They want to talk to the patient with no witnesses, so they can coach them on how to fit a proper insurance code.
I am quite familiar with this nonsense from the patient side as well. As a physician, I think I will be well-placed to ensure that my patients are getting appropriate care while not giving the insurance company bullshit reasons to deny claims.
Good on you. I mean no assumption, only shared advice from some years in the trenches.
When I was a clinic assistant in a cancer-focused plastic surgery clinic, it was my job to fight with the insurance companies. I did prior authorizations for every surgery and they would do shit like approve the removal of a melanoma without requiring prior authorization, but performing the skin graft to repair the 10cm diameter hole required a prior authorization because the procedure code falls under the “Plastic Surgery” heading and they wanted to make sure you’re not getting skin grafts for cosmetic reasons.
It’s wild that Americans accept this idiotic healthcare system.
Unfortunately there are people here in Canada who think it’s a better system. 😕
What are their complaints about the Canadian system out of curiosity? Just the taxes?
Complaining about the taxes would be the dumbest since the US spends a lot more tax money for a lot less per capita.
The first card fell last week
We don’t accept it. We were born into it, and the powers that be are bought and paid for. Tis bullshit.
Hey now, we have some of the best healthcare in the world if you can afford it, and healthcare stats that demonstrate just how few people that actually is.
Every time I learn something new about murica its a new horrifying thing that makes me wonder how your country hasn’t been thrown into civil war.
What so many Americans seem to consider normal is sounding quite insane for more civilised countrys.I guess I get hung up on the whole:
Everyone knows this is true; it’s not a secret in any way. But it’s a violation of a number of regulations
bit.
So it seems like we could very easily stop these corporations from literally killing people with already existing regulations we are just choosing not to. COOL.
Bold assumption that “we” (meaning the government) includes anyone actually reading this, because as far as I can tell the only “we” the government considers is capital owners. Unless you’re proposing some alternate method of behavior alteration.
Its only illegal once you are prosecuted for it. That is how businesses operate. Its not just regulation we need but a justice system that has some teeth
This is what I want to see.
Beat them back at their own game.
It is like when police say they wish that policing was like in The Andy Griffith Show. Tell them that everyone knew where sheriff Andy Taylor lived. Why don’t you tell everyone where you live, sheriff ?
My wife’s neurologist has done this with her insurance more than once. Especially the practicing out of scope or without a license. Usually she got her way. Probably the best doctor my wife has ever had.
The tragedy, in my opinion, is that Americans have to do this stuff at all. You need a tactic to get the service you’re literally paying for out of your own pocket.
Saved this advice for future reference - thank you!
This has big soviergn citizen energy. “Say these magic legal words and they have to pay your bill”.
It’s basically the same tactic, convince them that you’re too much of a pain in the ass to deal with and they should just give you what you want to get you to go away. Only it’s for accessing your own fucking healthcare that you pay them money for and not, you know, avoiding paying child support or truck payments.
