helwen

If you've ever been sick or might be in the future, you might want to take a look at these...

Health Care in the U.S., including what's happening with Medicaid in some states, and being considered by others...

Your New Medical Home, talks about how insurance, pharmaceutical, and some big business concerns are having a lot of say in the structure of our health care system, and not for the better.

A brief excerpt from the end of the article:

Is it possible that the constant drumbeat of negative news stories — the dire state of our healthcare system and need for a massive overhawl, the epidemic of obesity and chronic diseases in need of "disease" management by a third party, errors in need of a nationalized electronic database to improve safety, and the crisis of uninsured necessitating mandates requiring everyone to purchase health insurance — might not be entirely objective, accurate portrayals and that certain interests might, instead, be working very hard to convince us of all this? Can we trust that their new healthcare delivery system will deliver care that's in our best interests, or their's?

Medical Homes will put someone over the management of our care who is being paid to do certain tests and not others, write certain prescriptions, monitor and share our medical information with the Federal government. If you believe none of this applies to you, it does.

Worth reading the research that went into this article!

Oh, and note that they're only talking about standard medical treatments and medicines. No alternative care, even though many of today's doctors do in fact work with naturopaths, chiropractors, etc.

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Already people are getting turned down for medical treatments of various sorts, here, in Canada, and in the U.K. Anyone reading this who has friends or family in Canada or the UK, or lives there, knows that their health care system (which some people in the U.S. are pushing for) have problems of their own. A medical plan one person at our company was pushing at a recent meeting, L shot down because under the 'wonderful' new plan, my shoulder surgery wouldn't have been covered, and it's a good question as to whether we could have paid for it ourselves -- probably, but then we wouldn't have any savings for the rest of the year. Other folks less fortunate than us just wouldn't get it done.

And my case wasn't life-threatening, I 'just' wouldn't have been able to do a lot of things anymore. I was reading about a Canadian man who had to come to the U.S. to get an MRI for a brain tumor, to find out if it was malignant or not -- couldn't get one scheduled in Canada for 4 months. As it turns out, the tumor was malignant and aggressive -- and again they had to come to the U.S. to get it treated, because even with proof they couldn't get scheduled for treatment quickly enough. He was lucky he had enough money to pay for it, although he and his wife are now contesting having to have done it this way with the Canadian government, since they aren't wealthy -- probably used up all their savings and then some.

In the UK there was a survey done of physicians that might be a shocker for some folks, as they talk about how some medical treatments should be denied to people who are obese, smokers, or elderly.
Survey

Mind you, even though this just a survey, denial of services is already happening. And of course, if you can get the money together, you can still get treated, but out of your own pocket (although, come to think of it, isn't the government program paid for by the peoples' taxes? hm....).

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Now it's true that medical treatments can be costly -- I've seen what the costs are for hospital operating rooms, MRIs, PT, etc. But if this is the case, how do we pay for _equitable_ treatment for everyone? Apparently the systems in the UK and Canada aren't perfect, any more than the U.S. one(s). Shouldn't we be looking at something _different_ than these systems then?

And why not emphasis on health maintenance? Well, one reason may be that studies have found that healthy people cost more... yeah, I know, sounds weird huh? A healthy person lives longer than a sick one though... so, not necessarily an incentive to health insurance companies, if in the long run it costs them less for a person to get sick and die, instead of staying healthy and continuing to come in for the recommended health exams and tests.

We all know that just having "insurance" isn't the answer -- our insurance doesn't cover everything, does yours? Has your co-pay gone up?

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Oh, and for more exploration of health care concerns, check out here: http://ahrp.blogspot.com/ (a blog for talking about this and other health concerns, like say, the FDA approval process that allows medications that may cause suicidal tendencies to be distributed)

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Not saying I have the answers, and I'm not getting in better shape and losing weight because "they" might decide someday to deny me care. I'm just doing the best I can with what I have, and exercising and getting stronger means I can do more stuff and have more fun doing it.