"That's the part that shocked me, that insurers really aren't just being obtuse or disorganized. They deliberately deny care because paying out hurts their bottom line"
They do it with car insurance, and house insurance and everything else so it is not surprising.
this is the one issue more than anything else that completely baffles me about the US. But like you say there are some powerful folks who have an interest in maintaining the system so I'm not sure how you get to a more humane place from where you are now.
This is both heartbreaking and infuriating. I am so sorry that you had to suffer the loss of a child. And then to be stiffed by your insurance company. What an outrage.
I am not sure when "Sicko" is coming to us, but I will be certain to see it.
My mother in law has Kaiser. She is 97 and almost unable to struggle out of bed to get on her commode, with two people helping her.
Nonetheless, we have to haul her up to our Kaiser Clinic frequently to have her blood work done. She's on heart medication that has to be carefully regulated. Every time we bring her back, she is almost dead from fatigue. It's outrageous that there are no house calls for this sort of thing.
She lives next door. We have two full time caregivers for her plus which we have to be available at all times to help with lifting and moving her. So this is how we are enjoying our retirement! But there is no way we wold put her in any of the the terrible nursing homes in our area. If she were poor or we were, we would have to provide all her care ourselves.Those nice retirement facilities are for able-bodied old people, not for frail women like her. The tenants have one month leases and are booted out if they are no longer ambulatory or have other major health problems.
My MIL has always managed her money well, but now she is far exceeding her income in the amount of care she needs. It's about $5,000+ a month at this point.
Seeing what has happened with her,we have put aside sums of money for any health contingencies, because all we can get is Kaiser, and Kaiser is not all that great.
I have friends who were denied (even) Kaiser because of "pre-existing conditions."
And we're the lucky ones!
It's the same with malpractice insurance- the insurers don't actually mind the occasional big settlement because it gives them a new alarmist reason to jack up coverage (which is legally required, thanks to insurance-industry lobbyists), thereby jacking up costs for every payee down the road.
I don't want to see this movie because I know it'll just make me angry. Fortunately (sort of, it'd be better if this were legitimate)there are a lot (and I mean a lot) of doctors that I know who do a ton of underground practice- everything from hooking up folks with free drugs (samples, close-to-expiration pharmacy stuff etc) to kitchen-table surgeries (removing moles/teeth, childbirths) for free, to people who don't have the ability to pay.
And I hate, hate hate the notion of states requiring coverage for everyone- we don't need health insurance, we need health CARE.
With much of this I agree, but I have to chime in and say the Cuba part is bullshit. If you are a visiting foreigner, yes, you can get tip top care, and they do innovative research. And yes, Fidel funds a free medical school for people from around the world, and sends doctors to other places. What is not so pretty is that regular Cubans can't get that $120 medication at all. Nor can they get basic anti-biotics, pain relievers, etc. The Soviet model is alive and well there, and regular Cubans suffer. Of course, the embargo plays a huge part, but as with other scarce resources, the government makes the decision to allow tourists with money to have access, when regular Cubans cannot. Politics and economics dive the distribution of health care there as well as here, though the consequences are much more equal (no one gets much, beyond a very limited basic health care).distribution is
Great post. I work for a nonprofit within a hospital, and virtually my entire job is to try to fill gaps in the system. I can't even get close. My Dutch relatives are absolutely amazed and shocked when I explain how things "work" here. I wish the Democrats would get a backbone and initiate real change. I won't even tell you what I wish the Republicans would do... Love your blog, BTW. I just got hens too (in Minneapolis).
As a Canadian, I can say without question that our health care system DOES have flaws - long waits for care being the biggest - but for the most part it's as different as night and day to the US system.
My husband, an American citizen living with PR status in Canada, frequently gives me perspective that blows my mind and breaks my heart. So many of my friends are in the US..
As someone who's been through bankruptcy once already due to medical costs related to cancer, and am gunshy about the bills that are mounting again (I owe nearly $2000 to the various doctors and hospitals in the area right now, and this is with medical insurance, yes, and *not* for any kind of major medical crisis, just for standard ailments, regular scheduled checkups, mammograms and dental care, the usual things)-- I'm just, how, how is socialized medicine any worse than this?
I can't wait to see the movie. I am sure we will all feel scammed when we see how other nations treat their citizens. I want to be a Canadian.
i am a US citizen living in canada on a spouses work visa. i am not even a permanent resident. but, i do have a Quebec National Health Card.
9 months ago i was admitted into hospital for a possible ectopic pregnancy, (therefore no x-ray) but turned out to be a ruptured spleen. i had multiple ultrasounds, spent 6 hours in surgery — 3 surgeons from different fields working on me. i had a blood transfusion, and spent 24 hours in intensive care and a week in a hospital room with no "room mate". My bill? $0.00.
To follow up on my surgery and pregnancy (unfortunately i miscarried quite early on) i visited multiple doctors and specialists for months. i was also paired up with a psychologist / therapist if i needed help to work though the miscarriage as well as the follow-up tests involved to figure out why this happened. My bill? $0.00.
Currently i am a freelancer, and small internet business owner, i do not have a full time job. If i was living in the US with my same job situation, i would have been ruined. i am 31 years old. My bill would have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. any kind of hope for personal financial freedom at any stage of my life would have ended.
People from the states ask me about my wait time at the hospital. I can't be clear, but i would say it was under 10 minutes. When my boyfriend helped me into the Montreal General Hospital Emergency room, there were 5 people waiting in front of me. They all looked at me, stood up and moved down a seat so i could sit in front for the triage nurse.
yes. there are problems with the canadian health care system. the CLSC's (government health clinics) are filled to the brim and at times it is difficult to get in for appointments.
I was alerted of a small measles outbreak in the Montreal area and because i am more prone to catch illness i need to get a MMR. my wait time is 3.5 weeks to get in for my shot. am i sick right now? no. in the states i might have been annoyed, but it isn't necessary for me to go in tomorrow. i understand that now.
every single person in canada (and especially) quebec saved my life. and they saved more than my life, they saved me from total financial ruin.
it would have been a different story if i still lived in Missouri.
Thanks so much for a great post. I'm looking very forward to seeing the movie.
I'm currently transitioning from a job at a healthcare marketing firm to a job at a domestic violence shelter, and the deep problems in the U.S. healthcare industry are just another reason I'm glad to be making the change. I don't want karmic residue, I guess. (One of my former clients is, I hear, a major player in "Sicko.")
What I don't understand is why Michael Moore didn't come show Taiwan's health care system*, which I understand is pretty much the best in the world.
Everybody is elegible for a health card, including foreigners [read: not racially chinese] working on a temporary visa. Cost of visiting a doctor for a cold or other minor illness: $6. Cost of visiting a certified acupuncturist or Chinese Herbalist: $6. Cost for visiting a doctor for suspected parasites at the most prestigious teaching hospital in the country: $6. You're sort of getting the idea, right?
A friend of mine, a foreigner living on temporary residency visas here for 10 years, has polymyocitis, a degenerative muscle disease, for the control of which she much take 7 different medicines a day, including corticosteroids.
Because she has a chronic illness, she has a special health card that limits the cost of each doctor's visit and set of medicine to $4. That's right, it's actually cheaper to buy medicine for a chronic illness, because they consider that you're paying for it more often.
Because of this, Taiwanese living all over the world are willing to fork over the cost of a plane ticket in order to get medical things done here.
And the quality of doctors and care is as high, or higher, than on a comparable health plan in the US.
A long time ago, I had to get fingerprinted in the US to prove I had no criminal record, so that I could get my permanent residency in Taiwan. The police at the local Milwaukee, WI station were openly incredulous that I would want to live anywhere but the good 'ol USA. They sneered: "Whadda they got that we don't got?" [actual quote]
I said: "Comprehensive national health care for nearly free". Boy, that guy shut right up, fingerprinted me, and got the heck out of there.
*MM doesn't speak Chinese? Has never heard about it? Cuba has more interesting political overtones? France, England and Canada populated by recognizable, empathize-able white people? Doesn't consider Taiwan a 'real' country? Doesn't want to mess with China?
Mary J, your comment shows that it's not just Canada's administrative system that makes it work, but the Canadian people (for the most part) who accept and work with the system. One of the huge problems facing any change in the US system is the problem of the consumers who have the "me ME ME now NOW NOW!" disease, and can't think about those who are faced with "never" or "now, but with monstrous debt later."
My dad had to be flown across the country for an emergency surgery at one of (I think) three hospitals that could treat him. The only way to get him there? Paying just under $20,000 cash for the emergency flight, up front. Luckily my brother is the kind of guy who does things like accept several no fee credit cards that he keeps around "just in case." I am extremely grateful at the exceptional care my dad got, but it maddens me to think that his life (and many others) might have hinged on that "just in case."
Our Canadian system does have it's problems but you know what, they are all cause by politicians at all levels bickering and dickering around with the money trying to be more like the Americans. Yes that causes a long string of curse words.
The ugly part is the upcoming generations don't know any better, spoiled and ignorant, are easily swayed into thinking American style is the way to go.
The most commonly discussed "problem" in the Canadian system is wait times. But a big chunk of that problem is that individuals think their problem is bigger than other people's problems. Medical necessity/urgency is a big factor. I get really angry when folks complain about waiting in the emergency room. My feeling is that if you wait in emergency that is a good thing. Because the folks who go first are REALLY REALLY sick.
Of course there are issues about having enough of the appropriate personnel and all the rest of it, but most of the publicly discussed problem is about inconvenience rather than serious adverse outcomes. And in the US, lots of people wait or get substandard care. Only rich people don't.
Something else to think of - I don't know about the other countries, but in NZ people pay quite high taxes, which goes toward paying for things such as medical care, family assistance, accident compensation, etc. Talk about raising taxes in the US and you get shouted down, especially if it's to help the "less fortunate". No it's not perfect here, and some politicians look at the US too as a good model, but I would rather cough up a few extra dollars now knowing I can get help if I need it later.
The taxes part is one of the things Moore glosses over. He makes the point that doctors and middle class people are doing well, and getting a lot, for their tax rate, but he doesn't give the actual rates. Also, when he talks about socialized successes in the US, he mentions education, which I think isn't going to carry a lot of weight with many folks here.
Ah well. My partner and I decided quite some time ago that we were French. Our values are family first, good but not extravagant life, and we love to eat and drink. But dammit, that was one romance language I was thinking I wouldn't need to learn.
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