Nick Kristof With The Ugly Truth: Our Health-Care System Destroys Families.
It's not the fact that they're trying to stop health-care reform by any means necessary that gets to me. (After all, we're now a nation of greed and to the corporate victor goes the spoils.) No, it's the lies they use to manipulate and frighten people that make me despair, because they successfully bring out the worst in people - and keep other people from getting the help they desperately need.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has a heartbreaking tale that illustrates why our present system is the one that's breaking down families:
My friend M. — you’ll understand in a moment why she’s terrified of my using her name — had to make a searing decision a year ago. She was married to a sweet, gentle man whom she loved, but who had become increasingly absent-minded. Finally, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
The disease is degenerative, and he will become steadily less able to care for himself. At some point, as his medical needs multiply, he will probably need to be institutionalized.
The hospital arranged a conference call with a social worker, who outlined how the dementia and its financial toll on the family would progress, and then added, out of the blue: “Maybe you should divorce.”
“I was blown away,” M. told me. But, she said, the hospital staff members explained that they had seen it all before, many times. If M.’s husband required long-term care, the costs would be catastrophic even for a middle-class family with savings.
Eventually, after the expenses whittled away their combined assets, her husband could go on Medicaid — but by then their children’s nest egg would be gone, along with her 401(k) plan. She would face a bleak retirement with neither her husband nor her savings.
A complicating factor was that this was a second marriage. M.’s first husband had died, leaving an inheritance that he had intended for their children. She and her second husband had a prenuptial agreement, but that would not protect her assets from his medical expenses.
The hospital told M. not to waste time in dissolving the marriage. For five years after any divorce, her assets could be seized — precisely because the government knows that people sometimes divorce husbands or wives to escape their medical bills.
“How could I divorce him? I loved him,” she told me.
“I explored a lot of options with an attorney here in town,” she added. “The attorney said, ‘I don’t see any other options for you.’ It took about a year for me to do the divorce, it was so hard.”
So M. divorced the man she loves. I asked him what he thought of this. He can still speak, albeit not always coherently, and he paused a long, long time. All he could manage was: “It’s hard to say.”
Long-term care constitutes a difficult and expensive challenge in any health system. But the American patchwork, full of cracks through which people fall, has a special problem with medical expenses of all kinds bankrupting couples.
A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these people actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills.
M. still helps her husband and, quietly, continues to live with him and care for him. But she worries that the authorities will come after her if they realize that they divorced not because of irreconcilable differences but because of irreconcilable medical bills. There were awkward questions from friends who saw the divorce announcement in the newspaper.
“It’s just crazy,” she said. “It twists people like pretzels.”
Oh my Gawd you mean lesbianism doesn't destroy marriages like those right winger moralists say?
A friend of mine owned a house and got cancer. Eventually he had to sell the house and live with family. He eventually died.
I have a solution to the problem of conservative obstinacy to single payer health care.
Read our blog http://blog.democratz.org
The Insurance Corporations will lobby their buddies in the
congress and senate for a law that allows them to go after
ex-spouses, children, casual acquaintances and next-door-neighbors.
And congress will ask,"Don't you want to go after their high school sweet-hearts as well?"
Good article. It's another side of the healthcare crisis that I hadn't even considered. What do all those right wingers think about that? How do they feel about families breaking apart, couples divorcing just so they won't be left financially destitute from medical bills. It's a crime.
The right-wing does not share your values and therefore does not see this the same as you.
It is this couple's fault they are not well-off enough for even this kind of expense. And it is the duty of their families, neighbors and church to help them, not the government.
The only exception to this is if the couple were somehow entitled by virtue of power, wealth or political connections. Then they would be entitled to feed until gorged at the public trough.
Joe Lieberman says it would be "frivolous" to have health care for all our citizens - as virtually all other industrialized nations already do. You would probably find that appalling. I certainly do. But, see, since Joe already has his, he must be entitled to it. And since those without, don't, they must not be worthy.
Therefore, how frivolous it would be to waste on the unworthy.
See?
Totally missed that. I don't understand how someone can think that...let alone say it.
It was reported in the 'West Briton' newspaper from a local speech of his he gave in Cornwall UK, but not reported in the UK's national press for some strange reason.
From a supposedly liberal MP of the party of the same name.
"don't' work don't eat"
Cyril was a fat fcuk too btw, he was very fond of eating at the taxpayers expense at the House of Commons subsidized 4 star restaurant.
Just because someone calls themselves a liberal or democrat, and takes advantage of the party structure and party funds, doesn't mean they are not closet selfish pigs on the not so quiet.
The Gang of Six Appears to be Dead -- But How Many of Them Know It?
Some stuff you can't make up!
Their "CONSCIENCE!" That makes them "sociopaths," unable or unwilling to decifer right from wrong. That explains an awful lot. Someone should do a study, but that would be undoable. Let's just say, in my own non-scientific observations, which have been vast, these are my results.
I live in a country with one of those dreadful 'socialist' medical systems. You know, the kind that has successfully treated my elderly retired mother for live-threatening cancer...not once, but TWICE. That's the 'death panel' at work.
The scenario described in this story WOULD NOT HAPPEN here.
someone bringing the truth home.
lobbyistsvoters might get a shot at a good healthcare bill if Nick can carry the truth. I fully expect the NYTwits to bring out Betsy McCaughey with an editorial opposing the 'public option'. Betsy will probably quote sara plain.Some stuff you can't make up!
Ms Madrak and Mr Kristof
why is it no journalists are interested in doing a story about physicians being persecuted by Insurers allied with State licensing boards. In Texas there's a 69 year old plastic surgeon incarcerated for over 4.5 months in solitary confinement + clothes taken away. Yet, I cant find ONE journalist to do a story, not one civil rights group interested in rescuing this poor man with a habeas brief. There are many other stories of retaliation against physicians and medical whistleblowers. Anyone interested ?
Spread it about.
Name and details, the oxygen of publicity on the blogs.
Only wish I could do it but I'm a healthcare provider, too, and I might be persecuted by the same situation!!! SNARK!!! Insurance is a horror!! I never bothered much about the routine refusals to pay legitimate bills, I just sent a copy of the rejection along with my formal complaint to the State Insurance Commissioner. I also have a form letter ready for the patient to sign the complaint to the Insurance Commissioner, as well. BAM!!!! I had a 98% collection rate!!!
works like a charm here in Nevada as well. I'm a nurse, but also have a child that was born with a cleft lip and palate. I'm sure all my carriers have "crazy bitch," marked on our files, but the moment I threaten to call or contact the insurance commission I generally get what I want.
it's okay if the gummint does it, I've been hit by them also...see my post down a ways.
I hope they have a long term model. Sooner or later they're gonna run out of people who can pay for health care except for themselves. But we don't want none of that socialism.
is intended to be a factual statement
unless there is proper oversight and firm measures taken against whitecollar crime, NO reform measures will work. This has nothing to do with party ideology, just medical fraud oversight and prosecution
plus local state depts, if they are partisan or incompetent that they cannot or will not investigate crime, then they need reform too.
The party of 'family values', of course!
A friend of mine, a long time friend of Bill W, who had worked hard as a logger in the Maine woods found himself dying as the result of a debilitating series of strokes. His wife was no longer physically capable of taking care of the man she loved. To get him the care he needed, she took the same route as M.
Each time I think of that, or people like the young woman in California denied a procedure by her insurance company. She died. Each time I think of them and then hear the shit that spews from the orifices of sanctimonious bastards like Hatch and Grassley and McConnell and Baucus and Boehner and Enzi. Each time I want to puke on their $5000 suits and shove their $1000 Gucci loafers where the sun doesn't shine.
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for these vermin.
This tragic story shows how Obama & congress bungled this. They should have held a week or 2 weeks of people testifying before a panel with stories exactly like this. The very real horro stories out there would have created a steamrolling effect. Instead they let the teabaggers, gun nuts, wackos like Palin & Beck & McCaughey write the narrative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr1X8HQVekc
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I've listened to and read McCaughey and it's a real disservice to link her to Palin. Listen to what she says instead of unfairly branding her.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/betsy-...
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples, promising liberty and justice for all
They had two stories on local Dallas news today regarding medical insurance.
One is of a little girl, with a head that was malformed by a difficult birth, so she needs something like a head brace, to help her head grow normally. Her father is fighting overseas. The insurance company refused the $3,000.00
The second I just saw a teaser for. A teenager needs an operation and it was approved by his insurance company only to have it reneged the day before the surgery was to have taken place. I don't know the details, but my guess is it was a pediatric policy, and he crossed a certain age line.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
But with the right screenwriter, actors, director...this would make a great movie, and would serve to get the message out there. The risk would be the powers that be linking the story to the real people, as well as they might feel about exploiting this tragedy. But it's a thought. It's a story worth telling and hearing.
I've already e-mailed Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann (rachel@msnbc.com, countdown@msnbc.com) and suggested that they each do a few two-minute segments per week showing the personal tragedies caused by the insurance companies.
I wish like hell michael Moore would update Sicko and get it back in the theaters. My bet is it would be a hot item of interest across the country.
thank you republicans?
Trust me, you don't want to end up here.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
there will come a time in many peoples' lives where they end up parenting their parents. After 10 years of Alzheimers ravaging my father, it left my mother a pauper. They'd been married for over 60 years, they were depression era type savers who planned on leaving something for their kids. They were destitute by the time he finally passed, and that actually had to happen for him to get some kind of aid. What we had to go through was horrifying. It didn't take very many years for mom to go downhill after that as well, suffering from dementia. This is just a HORRIBLE thing to go through, let alone having to have a family (not just the two involved, but all the kids and our families) close to bankruptcy due to bills. Add on some cancer treatments, a heart issue and a TBI within the extended sibling links? Two bankruptcies (while they HAD INSURANCE AND WORKED), out of 4 siblings.
It's criminal.
The compassion of conservatives, and their family of values.
Darrell Issa will be holding a health care town hall meeting this wednesday at 6:30 PM in the gymnasium of Rancho Buena Vista HS in Vista, CA. I plan to be there. If there are any other residents of the 49th district that get this comment, please try to attend. We need numbers.
The people of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." J.K. Galbraith
There are so many people in similar circumstances.
It's outrageous and criminal that this is happening to Americans in this day and age.
Lots of money for wars, though! No problem!
Gah, what a mess.
This is a sad story, but the reform package is totally silent on this issue. This is not the story of greedy insurance companies, because none were involved (the couple did not own a long term care insurance).
Emotions are raw, I mean they spent through their kids inheritence and her her living assets. But if health insurance is not designed to cover this expense, how do you come up with the $80,000 a year it takes to pay for a nursing home? Currently about 20% of all care is Medicaid and the rest is primarily private pay---in the worst case situation it reflects on the situation this couple is in. In order to be eligible for Medicaid you have to be poor--no assets.
Are we proposing a new law that allows people to keep a couple of $100,000 before Medicaid kicks in? Where is this money going to come from. Remember, the numbers you are hearing about regarding the cost of reform do not include allowing this couple to avoid being considered impoverished under Medicaid.
The lawyer gave them a whole bunch of strategies to get Medicaid-tranferring assets to the kids, trusts--all of these strategies so they can keep all of their money. By the way the resulting Medicaid dollars are not going to the poor who desperately need healthcare, its going to Johnny, and Stevey so they can go to a private pay college. This is an emotional problem no doubt, but recognize that with all policy choices come implications.
passes on their inheritances to their kids well before late year illnesses kick in. Its the only way to avoid the vampiric draining of a couples wealth.
when the one with the illness isn't your child.
by the medical industry.
with a sick child is also sucked dry. Children live longer with most illnesses too.
And as C&L has previously pointed out, passing it on to your children early won't always work to protect them. Even if you never passed anything to them and don't speak .. they may go for their assets.
http://crooksandliars.com/nonny-mouse/health-...
10-15% of my pay, or participate in a progressive payroll tax, for cradle-to-grave universal healthcare that also took care of long term care. Even at 15% it would still be cheaper than the system we've got. Make it a non-employer contribution tax, so that it wouldn't hurt businesses, especially as they try to compete in the global marketplace.
In the end, when we can afford and never seem to have problems finding trillions for illegal wars of aggression and illegal occuptations, and trillions more in shock doctrine transfers of wealth into the coffers of sociopathic banking, investment and insurance racketeers, all reasons offered for not having the best, most conprhensive healthcare in the world become just so many shabby, transparently ludicrous and morally repugnant excuses.
They should have emigrated to a compassionate country instead. And taken all their hard earned assets with them.
When our youngest was diagnosed with a severe, permanent and expensive illness at age 7, one of the doctor's took us aside and explained that we could abandon him at the hospital. Our look of shock caused him to immediately explain about the costs.
We didn't do it. It has been tough. But I remembered that talk immediately when I read this and thought ...
That doctor, we were not the first parents he had to give that talk to. She still gets to live with her "husband". Parents in this situation, they do not.
She probably does not get to live with her husband because the insurance corporations send out "investigators" to check for "fraud."
They investigate any number of cases.
If you are disabled, they check to make sure that you aren't in your yard weeding or raking leaves. Even if your physical therapist tells you to try these things: make sure that you have it in writing.
They want to make sure that you are suffering "properly."
An ex insurance investigator and friend told me this shortly after my disabling injury.
So how can we talk of reform when there has been NO expulsion of those who gave us Medicare Part D. How come no one went to jail. Lets start with legislators first who found a way to dole out mega bucks to their "constituents" the embed in-bed Insurance giants like Humana Anthem and UnitedHealth care. How many journalists - Ms Madrak and Mr Kristof included - have exposed the Medicare Part D fraud which affects far more touching seniors than the story here.
Doctors have stories like this everyday. But they are quickly silenced and banished into gulags. Now you have the same elements who gave us Medicare Part D championing healthcare reform. Pahleeze....
There are death panels: The insurance industry runs them
Columnist Froma Harrop's experience with a "death panel" involved her husband, who had cancer. It didn't involve a government bureaucrat. It was run by their private insurer, and the experience was not a pleasant one.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion...
the interview with ed schultz:
http://www.fromaharrop.com/?p=894
has them also, don't kid yourself. They use doctors that they pay to do medical diagnoses Bill Frist style (from afar) to deny SS Disability payments by refusing to see you in person for a real physical evaluation. That way they can drain assets.
It isn't just insurance that needs to be reformed.
Most recently, a guy had to wait 13 years before they gave him Disability payments.
Me? I'm going on 8 years after a spinal work injury and they're pulling this shit. My work comp lawyer even told me that after they made up some bullshit diagnoses because "you can't say that there's something wrong with your spine", even tho that's what the problem is and I have the initial accident report, settlement papers, two heart attacks with 3 stents (and a screwed up spinal cord) to prove it. I can't see an outside "the system" doctor for an independent evaluation because they have a do not treat/diagnose statement attached to my Social Security number that any Doctor can look at on his computer upon first seeing me.
In my eyes, this is fraud on their part and it's criminal.
They are doing this to a guy that has a wife and 4 boys, we've been living hand to mouth since my employment suddenly disappeared.
If they can do this to us they can do it to anyone, without batting an eye.
Dem. or Repub. this is exactly the kind of thing their staffers usually take care of.
I know all the jokes about the late Jesse Helms (I'm up in NC), but if you contacted his staffers with a story like yours you would usually get taken care of. Yeah I know, crazy but true.
Pick the longest serving one of the three (two Senators and your House Rep.) that one will have the most connections to clear the red tape, regardless of party.
won't do shit, he has a crappy constituent services as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what their game is, but they better get over themselves soon.
B.S. I think it has something to do with what (lies) AIG claim services is telling them, thru the old, already settled work comp claim. I don't think they really ever go away.
continues, with the farce that is 'healthcare' in the U.S.
I have posted numerous times about my own experiences as a Canadian, with our own healthcare system.
I had not realized that your dire situation (healthcare in name only) included such atrocities as having to suggest abandonment & divorce, by doctors, to families of patients. Sick, sick, sick.
My father, bless him, started to show signs of (early onset) dementia in his early 70's. He had planned ahead & given my sister & I 'power of attorney', not only for his finances, but also for a 'Living Will'.
Yes, a living will, giving us instructions on 'what he wanted', should his health deteriorate to the degree that he would not be capable of having any say.
After moving my Dad to a 'retirement home' & him living there for a few years, we recognized that his care, in this expensive private home wasn't as up to par as we would have hoped.
We went through the application process & paperwork, guided by very caring people who worked for the Ontario Ministry of Health & Long Term Care. We had a choice of a number of long term care facilities in the area...just had to wait for an opening. This happened within two months...only catch was we had to move Dad within a week...not a problem.
For under $1600. per month, my Dad now enjoyed: (the following is pasted from the gov't. website & is very accurate.)
"All long term care homes offer 24-hour supervision and nursing care.
The basic package includes the following services :
Furnishings (e.g. bed, chair), meals (including special diets), bed linens and laundry, personal hygiene supplies, medical/clinical supplies and devices (e.g. walkers, wheelchairs for occasional use), housekeeping, pastoral services, social and recreational programs, medication administration, and assistance with the essential activities of daily living.
Nursing and personal care on a 24-hour basis and access to a physician, and other health professionals.
Optional services are usually available for a fee. They may include hairdressing, cable TV and telephone services, transportation, etc.
Homes must prepare a "plan of care" for each resident, outlining the care requirements and levels of service offered. This plan must be reviewed at least every three months and adapted as your needs change."
The facility was much cleaner & more up to standard than the expensive retirement home. We had regular meetings with staff to be advised & to ask questions...i.e. doctor, nurses, therapy staff...just my sister & I with everyone involved in my Dad's care.
We were called if any concerns arose & kept abreast of everything.
My Dad was provided therapy & amazingly compassionate care (including laughing, pictures, visits by people with pets, entertainment...) and each & every person who worked there knew each & every patient, right down to their every little problem & their personality.
My Dad passed over a year ago, peacefully, in the manner with which he had asked for. No more nor less.
I am shocked & saddened that a country with so much, so very much...has so little regard for what it stands for...it's people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE
How many people now fighting against public health care will have a change of heart once they've had to really experience health private insurance? How many will realize too late that they have been unwitting tools of those who will gladly squeeze the very life out of them for a profit?
Or something more sinister?
I read this yesterday - it's a powerful story. So sad.
*
Reading about Kristof's friend breaks your heart, but for people without a heart who knows what they hear and learn. This piece is an interesting pair with Nonny Mouse's chilling July post on Pennsylvania filial responsibility laws.
posted that link upthread!
But in my case that was sheer coincidence.
There have to be a lot of stories out there of families similarly destroyed because of the morass that is American health care.
It reminds you of stories you heard about parents during the Depression who had to orphan one or more of their children because they didn't have enough income to support the existing family.
That government supports industries that make enormous profit from apportioning medical care, that decide what care to provide or withhold based on profit rather than the healthful life of the patient, is reprehensible.
more stories like this, I've seen them, worked on them and lived them. I saw a 10-year-old child go through his lifetime max for coverage and his parents scrambling to find another job to obtain more coverage. My in-laws experienced a story similar to this, but became poor enough, through a series of events that my mother-in-law finally qualified for some assistance. She had Parkinson's, and as if the motor issues weren't bad enough she also developed the dementia that some experience. She received stellar care through the end of her life, but it left my father-in-law with very little.
Insurance companies need to be fiercely regulated and restricted and we need a good public option. I get so tired and emotionally drained from taking care of people that could have had better outcomes had they had received earlier intervention. If the government can bail out Neil Bush and his Silverado fiasco and buy his crappy software for the classroom http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair04032004.h... it can also take care of its citizens.
but also not new. In 2007 my grandmother told me when my grandfather (WWII and Korea vet and then a 30 year civilian USAF employee) had a massive stroke in a similar situation to the article somebody (doctor, nurse, social worker not sure) told her to get a divorce. She refused and grandpa was in a coma for 25 months from 1980 to 1982 and most of the expenses were picked up by the VA and it didn't destroy her financially. Grandma said the person suggested divorce in this situation like it was perfectly commonplace.
This is just my personal story to reinforce how long things like this have been going on. Grandma passed away in 5/08.
Imagine a future where you Must buy Insurance of Some Kind by LAW. But the insurance is insufficient to meet your needs, but is expensive enough to put you into a perminent underclass.
Now imagine you get sick, it could be a long-term chronic illness, or maybe just a short-term acute but terminal illness - but very expensive. Including those nasty end of life last days expenditures, but hey we don't want any 'death panels' here, no DNR on an Advanced Medical Directive or POLST form. No, in fact you are Required to submit to expensive, but ultimately futile treatment - as a matter of "standard of care."
But medical care is not a right! It is a responsiblity! So the spouse, the children, the parents, a distant cousin - someone will need to pay the bill! Why we can bankrupt half the country! Just think how nice the labor market will improve for our corporate overlords!
One goverment funded healthcare program will not solve the problems only create new ones. The medicaid and medicare laws need to be changed to assist people in these situtions. The goverment pays all healthcare now for the families who have parents who wont work, they have more children and the goverment shells out for the whole pregnancy and then picks up all the kids medical. They need to change the laws so they are more geared to the way they were originally meant to be, as a help. Instead of forcing people who have worked their whole lives into divorce they should pick up the slack that their excisting insurance does not pay. While the people who have never worked should be made to find jobs, or lose their free insurance. They are out there, every fast food resturant, wilson farms and grocery store is always hiring this may not be enough for them to live off or to supply health insurance, However at least they will be paying into the system which is supporting them. I think it is high time we find a middle ground, no right no left, (both sides are to extreme) what is best for our country before we have no country left.
n/t
have turned America into a failed state. They've killed the nation, and the only reason the carcass is stil moving is because of its inertia. As they continue to prey on the corpse, it's going to bleed away stored momentum until it all comes to full stop...after they've picked it clean of anything of value.
Both parties are corrupted beyond salvage, and the fix isn't going to be found in the ballot box. Nor is taking it to the streets likely to fix anything. Absent a few key Constitutional amendments, I think this place is toast.
Yes, I sadly agree. The USofBLOODYISRAEL, the corpse that still has enough to feed the vultures of WALLSTREET is a dead country. Which is why I chose to leave the country. PUKIES have provided many so-called 'third world' countries, that arent' as bad as the USofBLOODYISRAEL, in fact any other 'Banana Republic' is better, 'cause they just havn't gotten up to speed on extortion, control, exploitation, propaganda, so as to please their PUKIE masters. These POODLES of the BUSHCRIMEFAMILY had their own corruption in place before the PUKIE PETEOLEUM MAFIA came to town, and along with that some very powerful, monied, rich folks who dont' like an outsider like the USodBLOODYISRAEL meddleing on their turf!! as we are seeing in Columbia.
And how can I do it?
The main problem with ANY aid in the United States is that its meant to catch you when you've hit the ABSOLUTE BOTTOM, after you've spent all of your money, sold off all of your property, absolutely everything you've accumulated throughout your entire life, (which other pick up at distressed/"fire sale" prices [even though you just made the "mistake" of getting sick in this country.])
That is another issue that I leave to somebody else. I'm a Green Card holding Canadian Citizen and I'm going to re-establish residence in Canada soon.
I think that the current administration just needs a public option to cover only those who aren't covered, (those who the insurance companies don't cover right now, [the indigent, the poor, the millions of people laid-off in the current economy, the ones that the insurance companies stopped covering because they might cause expenditures, the ones who worked for a company where some of the employees might cause expenditures, the ones who worked in an industry where it looks like there might expenditures.])
The only thing the administration have to bring up is the fact that they aren't covered by any insurance policy so the insurance companies have NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT THEM.
It is LITERALLY no skin off of their teeth. They aren't covered.
Then I would extend the offer to anybody who gets dropped from the insurance company rolls at a later date too.
Not recruiting but instead taking in all of the rejected for whatever reason.
I predict that the plan would become in immediate success with everybody.
aid for families with dependent children at least back in the 70's -- to be eligible for aid, a family could not have two parents, so poor couples with children had to split up to get food and basic aid for their kids.
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