by hilzoy
It’s not just the people who die because they can’t get medical care, or get much sicker than they need to because they can get health care only through emergency rooms, and emergency rooms do not manage long-term, chronic diseases like diabetes. It’s not just the people who die or, like Mark Kleiman, come close to dying because of the delays caused by the need to deal with insurance companies. (If you didn’t read Kleiman’s story when he posted it about a month ago, do it. Right now.) It’s the fact that in a system in which all our citizens had health insurance, a system like the one that every other developed country on earth has, this would never happen:
“A husband, financially desperate because of his wife’s medical problems, walked her to the balcony of their fourth-floor Kansas City apartment, kissed her, then threw her to her death, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
Stanley Reimer, 51, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder for allegedly killing Criste Reimer, 47. Her body was found Tuesday night on the pavement outside the Plaza Point Apartments, 4901 Wornall Road.
Reimer was being held Wednesday night in the Jackson County jail on a $250,000 cash bond. His arraignment is scheduled for today. (…)
When police first questioned Reimer, who was in the apartment when they arrived, he told them “something bad” had happened to his wife, according to the probable-cause statement filed with the charges.
“She didn’t jump,” he said, but didn’t reveal much more.
Detectives said they were suspicious about how Criste Reimer died because her caregiver told them she had numerous health issues and could barely walk. She would have been “physically unable to climb over the railing of the balcony,” the caregiver said, according to the probable-cause statement.
Several hours later, after more questioning, police said they determined Reimer threw his wife from the balcony because he could no longer take care of her medical needs, according to documents.
Criste Reimer had battled numerous medical problems for several years, a fight that drained her physically, according to Jackson County Probate Court records.
Her weight had dropped to 75 pounds, she was partly blind, and she had an extensive history of traumatic brain injury, knee surgeries, neurological disease, hypothyroidism and hydrocephalus. She was also on a host of medications. (…)
Her medical bills ranged from $700 to $800 a week, and she had no health insurance, according to Probate Court records.”
This blog has found online guestbook records that indicate that this couple has been married for at least nine years, and probably longer. Mr. Reimer had previously tried to sell what seems to have been their only substantial property to pay for his wife’s medical bills; here’s what she had left to pay for that $700-800 a week in medical bills: “An inventory of her assets at that time showed she had $200 in her checking account, household goods and furnishings valued at $500, an individual retirement account of $4,000, and real property valued at $2,000. It also showed she was receiving $325 a month in Supplemental Security Income and $400 a month in royalties from the Kaiser-Francis Oil Co.” And those royalties seem to have been from the land that was to be sold.
I cannot imagine the pitch of despair to which this situation must have driven Mr. Reimer. I don’t mean to endorse what he did, but I think it’s the action of someone driven beyond all endurance. Situations like his and his wife’s do not exist because of some unalterable necessity. We allow our society to be set up in such a way that they can occur. We should be ashamed.
Yeah, well, so what. It’s against conservative ideology to do anything about this , therefore nothing should be done since conservative ideology is more important than reality.
Just as it was against conservative ideology to do anything about child labor, unsafe work conditions, pollution, gerrymandering, poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, or global warming.
Sorry. Feeling particularly embittered today. I just wish I could think of one real problem that conservatives had ever solved and one real problem the solving of which they have not obstructed. Mahablog has another of one her lovely essays, this one about the importance of returning to a state of political discourse which allows the respectful airing of a variety of views. Intellectually I agree, emotionally I don’t. I’m sick of conservative obstructionism.
In July 2003 I experienced a severe cardiac electrical disturbance, which was misdiagnosed in the emergency room as exacerbation of my chronic emphysema. It took six months of chronic heart symptoms to get a referral to a cardiologist, who did vascular tests but no electrical tests. After five months of waiting for tests, results and appointments he pronounced my heart in perfect condition, despite my resting heartrate of 90+ and a rate after the mildest of exercise of 140-150. In October of 2004 I finally went to the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, not fully covered by my insurance, where the electrical disturbance was finally diagnosed and a procedure performed that reduced it to tolerable levels.
Best healthcare in the world?
You know, the more I think about it the closer I come to the conclusion that the basic motivating force in this country is fear. That the “leaders” of this country are constantly running from one bogeyman to another, whether it be illegal immigration, terrorism, “socialized” medicine, communism, etc., in order to scare the populace, who of course obliges most of the time.
We’re a nation of fncking bed-wetters.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this country went seriously off the rails in the 80’s, when we declared war on the poor and decided that wealth was really all that mattered.
Our national culture is so deeply sick, its values so extraordinarily distorted, that I’m not at all surprised to see every other industrialized country on the planet pass us by in terms of quality of life.
Ugh and CaseyL are both right, of course. Why declare war on the poor? Because they could be made to seem scary — those panhandling, crack-addicted, dark-complected poor people.
Why wealth? Security. Ain’t gonna join those poor people, no sir — why, just look at my house! and my SUV! and my DVD recorder!
Fear is easy to stir up and highly motivating. It’s the first resort of the demagogue. And thanks to the media and our schools, demagoguery is what runs this country.
Hiltzoy
Why do you waste your talents as a professor instead of writing op-eds?
Answer: Nobody would print your stuff.
The Serious People like to talk about tradeoffs – so much trouble for this goodness, and so on. But for me, this is simple. No gain in other health considerations is worth this kind of cost. And it’s a known, knowable cost, that so many people each year will end up that destitute. Nothing about it is a surprise, and when policy makers keep doing it, nothing about it is an accident, either.
Increasingly I wish I had better circumstances at the moment, so as to make a better candidate for emigration. I love what I think of America, but it’s hard to get to that these days through all the slag.
I just put this graph up regarding US healthcare exceptionalism:
http://pyjamasinbananas.blogspot.com/2007/08/us-exceptionalism.html
While I am an unabashed proponent of UHC, I do not necessarily agree with your counterfactual. UHC is beset with a host of problems, and satisfaction levels in most UHC countries are not all that superior to ours.
Further, public health scholars have long pointed out — to deaf ears — that as much as enhancing access to care is morally obligatory, there is little serious dispute that spending $$ on public health/preventive medicine will have a far greater effect on health outcomes in the aggregate than any measures we take to reform access to and delivery of acute care.
If we really want to improve our health measures, we can start by spending more than 5% of our current health care dollars on public health and preventive medicine (stats current as of 2006). But there’s no $$ to be made in public health and preventive care, and it isn’t sexy, unlike the rescue medicine that has characterized medical practice in this country for nearly 100 years.
None of this is to deny the utter tragedy that you highlight, of course, and again, let me say, before I get accused of all manner of things, that I am unabashedly liberal, strongly in favor of UHC, and disdainful of the notion that markets can allocate health care resources justly.
But the most convincing case for UHC is its signaling effect, and here I’m drawing on Charles Taylor’s notion of irreducibly social goods, and Deborah Stone’s work on health policy. I do this work for a living, and I am totally convinced, pace Churchill, that UHC is absolutely the worst system of HC we have, except for all the other ones that have ever been tried. It’s not the case that UHC will necessarily be cheaper (though it might be), or that it will provide better care (it won’t, unless we adjust our priorities to account for public health/preventive medicine), or that it will produce better outcomes (thought it might).
Rather, UHC is morally preferable, IMO, because it represents a social commitment to provide for the basic health needs of its member communities. It represents a vision of healthcare as a commons, to quote a Jonsen and Jecker article, as an irreducibly social good, to use Taylor’s marvelous example. What UHC signals to the community is far and away its most significant moral feature.
Are we as a community going to continue to perpetrate the (utterly misguided) methodological individualisms that de Tocqueville noted, or are we actually going to honor Adam Smith’s horribly corrupted vision of a virtuous market, of a market that, harnesses man’s basest and most selfish impulses and transforms them into a virtuous practice which produces good for the community??
I’m not optimistic.
satisfaction levels in most UHC countries are not all that superior to ours.
This is a false argument. While quantitatively they are relatively the same, the issues are different. The questions asked in these types of survey’s are relatively the same but the negatives come from different areas.
I’m more than happy to shift some satisfaction levels around in my own healthcare provided that all our citizens are cared for and not left to being thrown off balconies..as it were.
I, for one, am gratified that Criste Reimer didn’t land on Terry Schiavo, as the latter walked to her new job as the receptionist at a subprime mortgage company, which she clearly could have handled given her capabilities.
Now that would have been murder.
The arc traced by Criste Reimer’s body to the pavement is merely a case of volatility in a bumpy medical insurance market. If you hold your head a certain way, you’ll see that she is actually soaring in our buoyant free markets. All of the long term signs are bullish.
I wouldn’t have sold Criste short until her weight reached 59 pounds, especially now that the SEC has ruled that we can short on downticks. Just in time, too.
After all, cutting naughty 1930’s style regulations gives us the freedom to hit the pavement like a piece of commercial paper tied to Larry Kudlow’s leaden ideology.
For the record (that would be my permanent record, which luckily, like the holdings in a hedge fund, is not forced by the government at gunpoint to maintain transparency, if you don’t count satellite imagery recently made available to local law enforcement), I think Terry Schiavo should have been kept alive by the government, but only if Tom Delay received a substantial tax cut in return, and I think Christe and her husband should have been provided free medical care by the private sector, but only to prevent further encroachment by faceless bureaucrats, who, after all, are faceless because their health insurance doesn’t cover face transplants.
More seriously, I would be against a universal healthcare system that withheld care from either of these people because society deemed the cost excessive. The private sector does that job too well.
I predict that a savvy entrepreneur will one day open mobile emergency rooms which can be moved at a moment’s notice underneath the balconies of plunging patients. They would be equipped with trampolines, which of course could be withdrawn at the last moment if a patient’s insurance paperwork was not in order.
He has returned.
because it represents a social commitment
Interesting, because I’m in favor of UHC mostly for pragmatic reasons, mainly better efficiency. Cutting the non-productive insurance overhead, getting some sanity into the very expensive last year of life, and spending more on preventive care would cut our medical costs considerably. It would also take that burden off employers, so they wouldn’t be thus incented to avoid using American workers.
I’m not optimistic either.
Will Fafblog be next? And is this somehow connected with the resignation of Karl Rove?
I, for one, am gratified that Criste Reimer didn’t land on Terry Schiavo…
I read that, and said, “Waitaminute. I know that tone! I recognize that surreal kaleidascopic snark!”
Thullen is back! All hail!
Hey, dude. We missed you.
It is said of many people that they bring unique insights to bear on pressing problems of the day. Of few is it so true…
He’s alive!
JFTR, I ran Kleiman’s story by my health-policy-expert in-laws and they were deeply unimpressed.
“I predict that a savvy entrepreneur will one day open mobile emergency rooms which can be moved at a moment’s notice underneath the balconies of plunging patients.”
Plummetopathy. You take someone suffering from multiple ailments, infinitely dilute them in air, then drop them on a sick patient, teaching the latter’s immune system to react.
Welcome back, John.
“Ain’t gonna join those poor people, no sir — why, just look at my house! and my SUV! and my DVD recorder!”
Um, the last costs about $40 now. One of those things isn’t like the others.
“Increasingly I wish I had better circumstances at the moment, so as to make a better candidate for emigration.”
I’m familiar with the impulse, Bruce, but it’s not as if there’s some other perfect place to move. All the other western democracies do have their own problems with civil liberties, government security agencies, conservatives, etc.
Certainly given countries are better at various measures, but there’s no country one couldn’t find plenty of reason for hopeless despair, if one is prone to hopeless despair (hello!). It’s at least as much an internal problem as it is one of external circumstances. On the other hand, you never know what might make a crucial distinction in another’s life, so I’m not trying to stomp on the notion, either.
I did just make a post yesterday or the day before about how Canada, for instance, wasn’t, in fact, an alternative fount of civil liberties, though. Every country has its demons, just as every person does. (I know you know this, but, hey, it’s conversation.)
And soon there will be cheap Chinese SUVs for the masses.
Well, maybe still too expensive for Gary.
thank god Thullen is back! the long twilight struggle of our soul is now … a little more psychedelic!
(you’ve been missed, John.)
Wisdom from Gary: “it’s not as if there’s some other perfect place to move.”
L’enfer, c’est les autres. Which (I take it) means “you’ll run into sucky human being wherever you go”.
I do know it, Gary, but it’s good to be reminded. Not that circumstances actually do allow me to seriously contemplate it anyway, but no point in being consumed by pointless fantasies.
P.S.,
O frabjous day!
OT – Padilla….guilty.
Hail! Hail!
Welcome back John.
OT – Padilla….guilty
and the Dow falls 300+ on the news.
In July 2003 I experienced a severe cardiac electrical disturbance, which was misdiagnosed in the emergency room as exacerbation of my chronic emphysema. It took six months of chronic heart symptoms to get a referral to a cardiologist, who did vascular tests but no electrical tests.
I relate a similar experience under the Canadian health care system here, if anyone is interested.
Thanks, folks. I’ve missed the scrum and the company.
I’m not really back, but healthcare posts at OBWI stimulate the irresistible Dada in me. Life’s exigencies have me in lurker status.
Besides, Rilkefan does it better, and aimai’s not bad either.
There is something about the healthcare debate in this country that reminds me of the debate pitting the practice of raising growth-hormone-engorged, square chickens in tiny cages en masse versus the practice of letting happy chickens range free in a roomy meadow with open wet-bar privileges.
In the first case, we chop their heads off, pluck them, cook them over inexcusably high heat, and then gnaw the flesh from their bones with our incisors.
In the second case, we chop their heads off, cook them over inexcusably high heat using only the finest organic ingredients, and then gnaw the flesh from their bones with our incisors.
In either example, except for making a good case for term life insurance for chickens, what we end up with is a whole lotta dead chickens.
And now, I must take my pill.
But, not before noting that unless Padilla has a bunch of commercial paper he’s trying to unload, he counts for nothing in the catastrophe unfolding in the markets.
Make that two pills.
Clearly, this is what Mr. Thullen was up to.
Mona at UO points out the horrendous first sentence of an AP report on Padilla. Yes, the media is so unfair to poor Bush.
Samp,
This is a false argument. While quantitatively they are relatively the same, the issues are different.
The second sentence negates the first. The factual premise I offered is, as you concede, totally sound. I said nothing about why the satisfaction levels are similar, nor did I imply that the “issues” are the same. I join you in being willing to shift satisfaction levels for UHC. But too many think UHC is a panacea, when the reality suggests we may be similarly dissatisfied with a UHC system.
As I indicate, that is not a reason to oppose it. I think it is certainly morally preferable to our current nonsystem.
But, not before noting that unless Padilla has a bunch of commercial paper he’s trying to unload, he counts for nothing in the catastrophe unfolding in the markets.
oh, sure he does. but that evidence was classified.
Thullen a whack job, don’t listen to him.
Well, not not listen, he never sent me the mp3 so I can’t not listen, what I mean is don’t read his comments out loud. Next thing he will be asking for is Universal Auto Insurance for teenagers, which I could use with my 16 year old.
the health care system in this country is an embarrassment and I fully support universal health care. In the meantime, however, we have to make sure we are prepared for the unexpected. I have been working lately with Heinz Family Philanthropies and we recently published an excellent resource for women. It’s a free ebook called What Women Need to Know About Retirement.
We will continue to hear the horror stories until we get universal care but at least we can be pro-active as best we can in the meantime.
It’s against conservative ideology to do anything about this , therefore nothing should be done since conservative ideology is more important than reality.
Strictly in honor of John Thullen’s return, even if brief, I’ll state the following:
As a conservative, I’m in favor of some kind of national coverage. I have no problem with paying the money I do now for private insurance (a lot myself, my employer pays even more and counts that as part of my benefits package) into a health care tax that goes to UHI.
I mean why not? I pay a crapload of money for healthcare. It doesn’t matter to me if I and my employer are paying that to a private insurance company or the government. I just want the same level of care I have access to now. Deliver that and you have my vote.
@rilkefan:
Could you go into a little more detail about what the in-laws disagreed with /were unimpressed by about Mark Kleiman’s experience?
All the other western democracies do have their own problems with civil liberties, government security agencies, conservatives, etc.
That being said, what is called a conservative in Australia is much more like a Democrat than a Republican. They support Universal Health Care, an extensive social safety net, gun control and fiscal responsibility. So the problems with conservatives are quite different.
The other advantage of Australia, of course, is that our citizens are uniformly good-looking and personable. Every year we round up the ugly people and ship them to Hollywood, where they get work as actors.
I just want the same level of care I have access to now. Deliver that and you have my vote.
UHI, as run in a number of other countries, does deliver the standard of care of the US, and then some (compare the situation with Klieman and duoble-plus-ungood). What else needs to be done, or shown, to get your vote?
This is a troubling story. There is universal? agreement on this blog that the US healthcare system needs serious revision. I concur. Perhaps the story raises the issue of whether euthanasia should be legalized. The troubling part is that there are many parts of the world where there is no health care and people do not have any material assets or hope. Query whether they would resorted to such an act.
What else needs to be done, or shown, to get your vote?
Show me I’ll have the same freedom of choice, quality of care, and access to that care. Neither Klieman’s nor DPU’s anecdotes are representative IMO. I’ll pay what I do now (a lot) to the government for the same level of choice/care/access.
Can’t ask any more of a recovering Republican…
OCSteve: “Deliver that and you have my vote.”
Deliver that, and I’ll let you keep any small arms you like (after passing a safe practices test). Deal?
slightly_peeved: “So the problems with conservatives are quite different.”
True. And different problems regarding refugees, race, neighbors, immigration, and other problems.
“The other advantage of Australia, of course, is that our citizens are uniformly good-looking and personable.”
Worse, you’re armed with koalas.
Nell, I’m slightly reluctant to, since I’m totally not an expert, and I was arguing the other side, but since you ask: basically they said 0) it was totally unreasonable to expect to get treatment in his case on a shorter timescale 1) it was unlikely to matter on that timescale 2) if the insurance company was being recalcitrant, he should have just (given it was life and death) gotten the treatment and worried about getting them to cover the bill later 3) I think something about the US system having too many specialists, the relevance of which escapes me. Anyway, it’s a very wonky anti-US-healthcare-system household and Kleiman’s story (assuming I described it well) wasn’t received sympathetically.
Kleiman. Mark Kleiman. Not “Klieman.”
I am as big a supporter for UHI as anybody, but I am not sure that this story is exactly the one that should be used.
There are a lot of things we don’t know. For example, we know what her assets were, but what about his? Why didn’t she have health insurance? If she had SSI, why wasn’t she covered under Medicaid or Medicare?
There can be legitimate answers to all those questions, but the article doesn’t answer them. BTW, the comments following the article are rather interesting and display some of the broad variations of what we Americans think about things.
Rilkefan,
The relevance of the U.S. having too many specialists works on multiple levels. First, it drives costs way up because specialists charge higher rates and use all sorts of fancy technology that alone are responsible for as much as 40% of health care expenditures. Second, it contributes to the fragmented health care most people receive, which produces both worse outcomes and higher costs. It does this by consistently removing patients from the ambit of the PCP and to a specialist with very minimal standards (virtually none at all, in fact) for when transfer/consultation is appropriate. There are other reasons, too, but they are even “wonkier.”
Show me I’ll have the same freedom of choice, quality of care, and access to that care.
Funny thing is that I was having a healthcare discussion recently on another blog, and was astounded to learn that people in the US cannot necessarily see any doctor they want, that some plans will only pay for certain doctors. In at least that regard, the Canadian system provides a great deal more freedom of choice, as you can see whichever doctor you want, or go to any hospital you want.
In terms of quality of care, a recent study indicates that the Canadian system provides marginally better overall care than that of the US. If, on the other hand, you are wealthy then you can probably get better care in the US. The Canadian system blocks getting private care. That may be changed (not a good thing, IMO).
Access to care is universal. Anyone that needs it care get care, the old “Waiting lines for hip replacements” canard aside. My mother had three hip replacements done in her life. She had to wait a few months for two of them, but the third was required when her thighbone split, and that she got immediately.
My sister has had one hip replaced, and turned down two hip replacement offers before finally deciding on getting it done.
From almost everything that I’ve heard of both the quality of care, accessibility, and coverage in the US, including from Canadian ex-pats, the Canadian system appears superior in almost every aspect.
Crap, sorry. Italics off, I hope.
Let’s try that again:
Show me I’ll have the same freedom of choice, quality of care, and access to that care.
Funny thing is that I was having a healthcare discussion recently on another blog, and was astounded to learn that people in the US cannot necessarily see any doctor they want, that some plans will only pay for certain doctors. In at least that regard, the Canadian system provides a great deal more freedom of choice, as you can see whichever doctor you want, or go to any hospital you want.
In terms of quality of care, a recent study indicates that the Canadian system provides marginally better overall care than that of the US. If, on the other hand, you are wealthy then you can probably get better care in the US. The Canadian system blocks getting private care. That may be changed (not a good thing, IMO).
Access to care is universal. Anyone that needs it care get care, the old “Waiting lines for hip replacements” canard aside. My mother had three hip replacements done in her life. She had to wait a few months for two of them, but the third was required when her thighbone split, and that she got immediately.
My sister has had one hip replaced, and turned down two hip replacement offers before finally deciding on getting it done.
From almost everything that I’ve heard of both the quality of care, accessibility, and coverage in the US, including from Canadian ex-pats, the Canadian system appears superior in almost every aspect.
True. And different problems regarding refugees, race, neighbors, immigration, and other problems.
Yep – though it’s telling that your four examples are all about race. Bit of a thorny issue, here.
The Canadian system blocks getting private care. That may be changed (not a good thing, IMO).
Works pretty well in Australia – private hospitals can be set up, but if they’re doing an operation that it also done in public hospitals, the government pays them to do it. The end result is a system where AU$100/month private insurance gets you nicer accommodation, more hospitals to choose from and no waiting lists. But since that’s not necessarily how a Canadian private/public combination would turn out, I can understand your reticence.
From what I’ve heard from noted Australian Damian Conway, all the Australian wildlife except koalas is poisonous or otherwise deadly.
“The relevance of the U.S. having too many specialists works on multiple levels.”
Right, I’ve had that explained to me – it just wasn’t clear to me why it was a problem in Kleiman’s case, where it seems he was getting sensible referrals to reasonably specialized doctors.
Thanks, rilkefan.
if the insurance company was being recalcitrant, he should have just (given it was life and death) gotten the treatment and worried about getting them to cover the bill later
I had that reaction to Kleiman’s account, too — but only because I had reason to believe Kleiman could probably afford the gamble. But the vast majority of people certainly couldn’t.
The other day Rilkekind’s doctor said, Ok, this isn’t getting better on its own, let’s fix it – here’s how the procedure works, the success rate is 99%, he’ll be in the hospital two days, blah blah blah. I (because this was on my mind) asked if our insurance would cover this, and he looked at me as if I was from another planet. We’ve never gotten anything pre-approved.
Do people receiving standard cancer care get turned down when a doctor at UCLA orders a normal test or procedure?
all the Australian wildlife except koalas is poisonous or otherwise deadly.
There aren’t that many poisonous things in Australia – just watch out for the snakes, the spiders, the jellyfish, the stingrays, the blue-ringed octopi, the platypi, and the Russell-Crowe fronted band 30 odd Foot of Grunt.
Very few of those are actually deadly, though the final one may leave you looking for one of the others that is.
Anyway, sorry to derail the thread :).
Not many poisonous snakes. Most were killed by the spiders T.Pratchett, The Last Continent) 😉
Show me I’ll have the same freedom of choice, quality of care, and access to that care.
As pointed out by ++ungood, there are two (2) primary care physicians I can see (since they work from the same office, they’re considered one entity). Changing PCPs is difficult and time-consuming.
Moreover, I recently changed insurers. My ongoing perscription (that I’ve been on for 2 years) had to be re-approved, and I’ve been waiting for 3 weeks for a new hose and mask for my C-PAP.
Kaiser of Northern California is a lot better. You can see any doctor in-system at any time — you don’t have any of this PCP nonsense. It’s great to have one doctor providing ongoing care, but if he’s busy, I want to go somewhere else, now.
A couple of odds and ends from the (genteelly) poor life of a grad student: for years I didn’t have any choice in my HMO because there was one standard HMO in our contract and I simply couldn’t afford the premiums on the other choices offered. [We now have three possible HMOs to choose from, although at this point I’ll stick with she what brung me.] More or less unrelated to that, I was diagnosed with a possible neurodegenerative disease back in 2002 and needed to go to neurology to get it tested… a process which took almost six months and, had I actually had a neurodegenerative disease, would have resulted in irreparable, but likely preventable, damage. Instead, it turned out that I had a different ailment — a massive, chronic sleep disorder — that had been misdiagnosed by the hospital and which remained untreated for the next five years, nearly destroying my life in the process.
Oh, and the HMO refused to pay for the testing, which — on a grad student’s salary — required several months to pay for.
Now, I’ll declare flat-out that I don’t know whether UHC would have improved matters; I suspect, however, that it would simply because I would probably have had a greater ability to get a second opinion and thereby avoid some of the nastier effects of the disorder. Choice in health care is a wonderful thing, but only if you can actually afford it.
PS: My condolences on Rilkekind’s visits, rilkefan, and I hope his health improves.
Web-based healthcare protest:
(click on my handle to link to the protest)
I am asking everyone I know who administers a website to post this page in lieu of their business or personal web space.
The idea is that we in the US are a vast slacker nation. We do not have universal healthcare because we a are just too damn lazy to protest on the national mall until the government gives us what we want.
We can either be more like the French, who mount such a protest every second Tuesday, or we can mount a geek/slacker protest from the comfort of our own plush, cushy chairs.
Certain blogs, message boards, and other information nodes should be exempt from this action, so as not to shut down talk about the broader protest.
Anarch, glad to hear you got that issue straightened out, if excruciatingly slowly. Rilkekind’s health is actually fine, except for a plumbing problem which only leads to a treatable risk of infection and which is going to get fixed soon anyway now that he’s big enough for surgery. We have friends who have much much more serious issues and count ourselves lucky. Actually, we switched insurance just around the time we discovered the issue, and we count ourselves extremely lucky that the switch came before the problem arose.