Health Care

I agree that we have excellent health care in the United States.  However, the key is finding it at a price you can afford.  The wealthy and the very poor get the best.  The rest of us fall in between.  Another point is to be smarter than the clerk who makes insurance decisions.  Clerks obviously are no medical personnel, but make crucial decisions about treatment every day.  My sister had a lung transplant and if she had not been an RN who knew what she needed, she would not have lived almost ten years with a donor lung.  I just thank God that she was provided the opportunity for a transplant and that she had the money to pay for it.

Obama should realize that "If is isn't broken, don't fix it!"  He is so obsessed with changing everything that his "advisors," whoever they may be, overlook the things that can be modified for improvement.  NANCY PELOSI is not the president!!!

I work in the healthcare field for a hospital that is a charity hospital.  We are constantly having to look at ways to be able to pay salaries and maintain updated equipment and provide excellent care because we treat so many patients through the emergency room who have no coverage - that is our mission to treat patients who need our help.  Other hospitals do not do as much charity work.  Our insurance coverage has dwindled trying to offset that increasing cost.   I am healthy so far (age 66) and most of the time could have saved my insurance premiums and paid out of pocket and come out with extra money but I am fortunate.  My time will come.   It is such a difficult task to tackle because it is multifaceted.  Two areas where I have seen excess waste is drug companies buying lunch for doctor's offices to promote their drug (our medications go up because of this) - lunch is great though!   Insurance companies denying claims to meet a quota when there is nothing wrong - they just question something like an ID #.

I don't have the answer.  It isn't going to be fixed in a few months.  I think it is something that will take one change at a time, see the repercussions or improvements and go to the next step. 

Another waste is insurance companies making doctors order CT scans instead of an MRI when the doctor knows he needs an MRI.  The CT gets done and guess what, the doctor was right - he needs an MRI - so two costly tests.  I understand the reasoning from the insurance company - the CT is cheaper but this happens all the time - double testing to get the right result.

AS a senior I pay for medicare and also for supplemental.   This does not cover much but it is what I can afford. Of course you can get better if you have the money to pay for it. I hope I never get sick.

I was under Cigna Cobra.  I broke my ankle when I was moving from Colorado to Kansas.  I called for a doctor.  To my dismay, my bills were declined by Cigna.  They told me I was supposed to use a Cobra doctor.  I took money out of my retirement, which got me in trouble with the IRS, to pay my bills.

Surgery was done on my other ankle a few years earlier.  The Orthopedic Center of the Rockies in Fort Collins, Colorado made me pay for extra exams.  I can't prove it, but I believe they delayed a second surgery because the insurance company wanted me to pay a larger percentage of the cost by waiting for a new fiscal year.

Lloyd for some people our system is great but 45 million  plus Americans have NO health Insurance at all. We rank 21'st in life expectancy despite have the highest cost for health care. We have fallen off of the radar screen in innovation and stem cell research. People are dying everyday because they can't get diagnosed because they have no insurance. I read the propaganda regarding Canada in the last go around but the facts they spewed were not true. You don't see Canadians dropping their program for ours and even the most ardent conservative in England now ardently supports their National Health System after he had a child with Cerebral Palsy. One major disease will force most families into bankruptcy even with health insurance

I don't have insurance. I cannot afford to pay for it. Something has got to be done

"Healthcare" in our country is not health care anymore, it is big business. When a patient is no longer a patient, but a "client," you know something is wrong. I think the biggest problem is not in the delivery of healthcare services, but with the insurance companies running the whole deal, and the Doctors who are in medicine just to make money, period.  To me, the hypocratic oath is being broken everyday when it is not the patient's health that is of concern, but the patient's insurance coverage.  If I make an appointment as a new patient, the first question is always about insurance, not about what ails me, and the first forms in the mail have to do with insurance and paying the bill, not about medical history.  SAD!!!!!!!  I don't understand why all these things that are supposed to help our society end up sucking the pure life out of us!!!!!!!  The sad part is, with constant increases in all taxes (federal, social security, state, county, local, sales, vehicle, etc., going we soon will no longer be able to afford to live, so the greedy healthcare industry will be out of business, and there will be no more tax payers to bail them out.  They have charged themselves right out of business.

I am retired, but while I was employed I signed up for what I was told was Premium Coverage. I was hospitalized twice and when I returned home, I got inundated with EOB's(Explanation of Benefits) from the insurance company that said they were paying NOTHING! As I recall, there was a total of 23 EOBS's I received and only on 2 of them was anything paid. Out of a total of over $37,000.00 there was a payment from the insurance company of $150. I contacted my state's Insurance Commission to lodge a formal complaint and was told that since the plan was employee-funded, it was out of their jurisdiction. I paid much more than that in premiums, alone. I saw a writer indicating that USofA has the best insurance available and he doesn't want it messed up by this Administration. To him, to the insurance company involved...I say you are full of bovine excrement.