To me, it sounds like the docs in Canada said "he's going to die anyway, why bother to waste our time and money to comfort him"Yeah, but come on this whole things smacks of the "American way" when it comes to health.
And I quote: "While in the U.S. hospital, the boy was given a tracheotomy to allow easier breathing and sent back to his home in Windsor, Canada"
To an outsider, this means that if you turn up at a US hospital uninsured, they will stabilize you but not treat you.
And it sucks.
That is some of my own experience. Over several months, my BP had steadily risen to 250/140 last December, and I dialed 911 and was transported to an ER and then spent two days being stabilized in an ICU ... and then they moved me to a regular room and stopped checking my vital signs altogether so they could send me back home without ever getting to the root of my problem three days after that. Fortunately, however, I know of a sympathetic doctor who is willing to prescribe the extra BP medication I need as long as I pay him cash since he does not accept Medicaid patients at all.... this whole things smacks of the "American way" when it comes to health.
And I quote: "While in the U.S. hospital, the boy was given a tracheotomy to allow easier breathing and sent back to his home in Windsor, Canada."
To an outsider, this means that if you turn up at a US hospital uninsured, they will stabilize you but not treat you.
And it sucks.
Fortunately, however, I know of a sympathetic doctor who is willing to prescribe the extra BP medication I need as long as I pay him cash since he does not accept Medicaid patients at all
My view is that if a doctor wants to be trained at public institutions (many), have admitting priviledges at a tax exempt hospital (most), or want to receive insurance payments from a plan which qualifies for tax deductability under IRS regulations (even more), he/she should be required to accept medicare and medicaid. And it is reaching the point where the cost of medical services will need to be tied to the medicare reimbursement rate if the cost of health care can be contained
Except for the part about flat-lining, my experience was similar during my heart attack back in '99 at my hometown hospital where a cardiology group had just opened a new wing of its own and they (the cardiologists) were far more concerned about building a reputation than getting paid ... and one of them eventually told me they made enough from other people that they could have taken care of me for free and still remained in the black anyway. However, things are much different today. Two trips to a local ER back in October while I did not yet even have Medicaid did absolutely nothing for me, and the sympathetic doctor I was already seeing for cash said he could not order any tests unless/until I had some way to pay for them. Then in December I "refused" to go back to the first hospital's ER so I could be transported to the LSUHSC in Shreveport -- http://www.lsuhscshreveport.edu/AboutUs/AboutUs.aspx -- where "free care" is available ... but only to a certain point, I soon discovered. In order to qualify for their "free care" there at a teaching hospital, I was required to apply for Medicaid ... and now I am effectively limited to whatever Medicaid considers medically necessary (such as while on a gurney in the ER).I know a plumber who had a heart attack, he didn't have insurance, while out and about on a job, he didn't feel right, and he took a Bayer ( in his work truck) drove himself to the ER, and in the ER he had a "widow-maker" heart attack and literally, flat-lined. They did CPR, brought back a heart beat and rushed him to the OR. They put a stent in, fixed him up, he was in the hospital for sometime. Today, he is on meds. He is doing fine. He is back to plumbing and being my best buddy.
I was given a list of them when I was first granted Medicaid, and I picked one that seemed really great at first ... but now she does not seem comfortable with prescribing all the BP meds I actually need and she wants me to go back to the LSUHSC doctors I already know will not prescribe them since that would amount to their admittance of not doing a thorough job in the first place.Lee, call around and find a doctor near you, who accepts Medicaid ...
I have no problem with paying out-of-pocket now that I am on SSDI and able to actually do so, and I am grateful to the State of Louisiana for giving me "food stamps" (a debit card) for a year while I was applying/appealing for SSDI ... and I believe I will qualify for Medicare after two years on SSDI.I wouldn't be paying for meds out of my own pocket, unless, I had to ...
Because of my husband's death, and the military, I am able to use Medicare ...
I only know you a little from being here on this forum, but I can easily believe that about you! Overall, however, it seems crucial to find a doctor or doctors who are willing to go beyond "usual-and-customary" when dealing with our more-challenging cases ... and that leads back to the beginning of this thread where doctors make decisions based upon factors not always related to the specifics of an actual case: People with a commanding presence and/or money or insurance typically get more from doctors than others of us, and that means doctors are making decisions in the seeming "best interests" of entities other than their patients.My oncologist said, once to me, that everything about my lymphoma had been weird ...
What he meant was I have perplexed the medical field ...
I TELL them, LEE, what drugs I want to be on, LOL... AND, they listen. Dig that.
This is awkward, but...
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