A heartfelt patient's (and future nurse's?) view on healthcare in the US

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i ask you for a moment of your time...and i thank you ahead of time for it.

i have twenty cents to offer here as well...not just as a potential colleague but as a patient with lots of experience after already having had 22 surgeries, multitudes of different insurance plans and being uninsured. i am now on disability, receiving medicare, and hoping to recover some hope for my future by trying to be productive again. i am also a public health student with interest in healthcare delivery.

to begin, regarding hilary clinton, there are a couple things about her healthcare idea that bother me. first, as one poster mentioned, she wants to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. this is hard to do considering she receives some of the largest contributions of all the candidates from big pharma. secondly, on the surface her plan sounds great; however, it's to my understanding that her way of covering everyone is to mandate we all buy health insurance without addressing how we are supposed to afford it. from what i also understand they tried this in the state of massachusetts and so far it has been a failure.

next, regarding "socialized medicine", here in the us we hear about expansion of medicare for all. first, i would like to emphasize that by doing this, we are not engaging in full-fledged socialized medicine. socialized medicine involves the government employing medical providers for their services. now, they do this i believe in the va and the military, but in the private sector medicare still pays for services to private entities that are not employed by the government. secondly, as much as medicare has its issues (part d i think sucks), overall i am very satisfied with it and wouldn't go a day without it.

third, when it comes to long wait times as complained about in canada, just think...what if we had 47 million uninsured people back standing in line here in the us? it would be no different; however, i think we waste more money on healthcare here in the us by paying a thousand different middlemen (not an exact number, but feels like this). also, for many of us (me included) we already wait here in the us. medicaid is a prime example. granted it's a government program and most docs won't take it, but the money for medicaid has been getting cut from our budgets for other things. in just one instance, what if we took the money we are paying our middlemen insurance companies and put it back into something like medicaid? it's my belief as a patient that healthcare in this country is based solely on how much you can pay and nothing else.

i don't believe i'd be on disability today it i had access to the care i needed in the first place. and, thanks to my ever increasing medical issues and expenditures, i've had to battle with homelessness for over 3 years now because i am bankrupt so badly i may never be able to recover. (i don't stop trying to recover, however). in short, i think i may die because of healthcare, and join the other 18,000 that die each year because if lack of care.

i live this nightmare of fearing a lack of access to care and lacking the ability to pay for it everyday, and in the recent past i've been subjected to direct personal attack on me and my reputation, both verbally by a physician's office staff and in writing by a person collecting for a doctor. sadly, paying for care is one thing, but a bigger problem for me is that i can't keep up with endless mail of medical bills. in the meantime, physician offices have started to see and/or treat me as a lowlife despite this. (i am single, and with my healthcare i go it alone because of lack of a strong social network of assistance--family, friends, etc).

fourth, in my educational travels, an instructor of mine said something that i've never forgotten--we don't really have a healthcare "system" per se in the us. we have a healthcare conglomeration. to have a system implies order and regulation--here in my opinion we have organized chaos.

fifth, also during my education so far i've had to watch michael moore's "sicko" and critique it. though i am not a moore fan and think that he could have done a better job with showing the healthcare systems he did show, he did a great job showing what many of us are going through with dealing with healthcare in the us. the cases he presented are like ones i have either experienced personally or know a lot about. i cried my eyes out, not just because of the cases themselves, but also as a patient i felt his movie gave me vindication--vindication that's long overdue for the suffering that patients have to go through.

even though many of you may disagree with mr. moore, i would ask you to see sicko if you haven't already and please consider the thoughts i'm sharing here.

as a potential nurse, i also think we need a drastic change. i would like to go into a field with some hope that many of my patients won't die needlessly simply because they didn't have the money to even get basic access to care. even if there was the chance of lesser income, if i had any opportunity for greater job satisfaction as i believe can happen with a change i would gladly reconsider whether i really wanted to quit my profession. granted, there is no perfect panacea for our healthcare woes, but i would gladly help my fellow americans get the care they need, especially on the basic, preventative levels. though changing our way of delivering healthcare is only part of the equation, i think it would be a very big first step.

in the meantime, in light of all the heartache i've already seen in healthcare, i am not sure if i could go forward into this profession unless there is a change. though this may sound selfish, this is a feeling that i think may drive many dedicated folks right out of healthcare altogether, especially nursing.

thanks again for listening! you are all dear to my heart. nurses work their guts out to help patients every day--thank you! :redpinkhe

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Specializes in LTC, Psych, M/S.

I agree with you the most when you say there are 'too many middlemen' in healthcare.

I wonder how many people the insurance companies employ (thousands, probably) to sit behind desks and comb thru our patients medical files, looking for reasons to deny their claims.

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I agree with you the most when you say there are 'too many middlemen' in healthcare.

I wonder how many people the insurance companies employ (thousands, probably) to sit behind desks and comb thru our patients medical files, looking for reasons to deny their claims.

"This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans."

http://www.pnhp.org/

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php

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Specializes in ER, Infusion therapy, Oncology.

I agree completely that something needs to be done about the healthcare system in America. The problems are almost insurmountable. As a healthcare provider I see these problems everyday. Medicare puts each illness into a package and regardless of the complications will only pay that amount, so the hospital and the patient are left to eat the cost. Medicaid's reimbursement is almost nothing. Which is why most doctors refuse to take it. Even private insurance has gotten to where it pays very little. Even if the government forces everyone to have insurance (as Hillary would have them do) that does not mean the insurance you have will cover anything. I personally have a HMO provided by my employer that covers 70/30 of inpatient admissions. It would not take very long for my 30% to add up to an astronomical amount. All this said, other types of healthcare systems such as in Europe and Canada have a long list of their own problems.and we would be exchanging our current problems for new ones if we chose to go in that direction. I have been listening to the ideas of our politicians as they make their bid for the White House. I am not sure that any of them have the solution either, but it definately needs to be one of the main concerns as we go into this election period.

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Medicare puts each illness into a package and regardless of the complications will only pay that amount, so the hospital and the patient are left to eat the cost.

Hi Mianders,

Actually, I have heard of this. I believe what you are referring to is DRGs (diagnostic related groups). I hope I am on the same page.

I receive traditional Medicare and yes, I am stranded with lots of medical bills I still can't pay for. But it's better the nothing. If I didn't have it, I would be uninsured right now. Also, I am especially concerned about Medicare reimbursements to providers being continually get cut back. Unfortunately, I think the Medicare program is actually quite good, but it's not able to fulfill its potential because we have too many private entities with their hands in the pie.

I think our system as it is though continues to be reactive instead of proactive. As taxpayers we are going to continue, I think, to get beaten to a pulp with bearing the costs of healthcare on our society for illnesses after they've occurred, especially as we deal with more boomers coming of age. Prevention needs to become the mainstay and at some point it's going to happen when we don't expect it. I think the only way we are going to do this is to thoroughly rework our healthcare delivery.

I know a lot of folks may complain about the woes in Canada, etc. I myself have heard a lot of good things as well. In my predicament, if I had an opportunity and the resources I would not hesitate for a second to leave the US for healthcare somewhere else. Anything is better than nothing, which is where I am seeing our healthcare going. My own mother just became uninsured herself, and I believe her husband too. This has gotten very personal for me. I think a lot of us still think it can't happen to us--until it does. It becomes a whole new reality then.

Thanks for writing and for your feedback; it's nice to hear from you.

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Specializes in ICU M/S Peds Home Health.

Whether or not you buy the medical facilities and employ the healthcare workers or not.. it is a form of socialized medicine when you tax and then redistribute the wealth.

Socialism is socialism. Be it in the form of government cheese; subsidized housing or healthcare benefits.

It will stifle competitiveness and ensure that everyone has to endure rationing of care.

It will cost way more than any of the projections that are currently out there; much the same way that Medicare is 700% above the projected budget when it was implemented.

And while I haven't seen Sicko the rest of the tripe that dishonorable Mikey Moore has produced has allowed me to easily label it as false propaganda that is misleading at best.

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Military healthcare and the Veterans Administration hospitals and clinics are government run.

I am very happy to pay taxes to provide healthcare for soldiers and their families.

It needs to be expanded and improved.

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Specializes in ICU M/S Peds Home Health.
Military healthcare and the Veterans Administration hospitals and clinics are government run.

I am very happy to pay taxes to provide healthcare for soldiers and their families.

It needs to be expanded and improved.

I too, am happy that some of my tax dollars support soldiers and their families....

But those are benefits for the sacrifices that they have made by serving their country. It isn't something for nothing.

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Specializes in Med/Surg/Ortho/HH/Radiology-Now Retired.

You might be interested to learn how we in Australia operate.

http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/

Even an American man on holiday here in my city received top class healthcare and hospitalisation in one of our public hospitals. No questions asked! He was taken care of first. Any money dealings were the last thing talked about. He and his wife were blown away by the kindness, the immediate care and attention he was afforded.

During his stay in hospital, his wife was looked after by the social workers and accommodation, transport to visit her husband, meals etc all arranged for her. If memory serves me correctly, while they did have travel/health insurance, it nowhere near lent itself to what they actually received courtesy of our public health department.

NO person in need of medical help is ever turned away from an Australian public hospital.

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I am also glad to pay taxes for the original posters surgeries. Now Enduringfaith is a nursing student. I hope for a healthy and useful life for all. And nursing students have a special place in my heart.

God bless you all.

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Specializes in ICU M/S Peds Home Health.
You might be interested to learn how we in Australia operate.

http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/

Even an American man on holiday here in my city received top class healthcare and hospitalisation in one of our public hospitals. No questions asked! He was taken care of first. Any money dealings were the last thing talked about. He and his wife were blown away by the kindness, the immediate care and attention he was afforded.

During his stay in hospital, his wife was looked after by the social workers and accommodation, transport to visit her husband, meals etc all arranged for her. If memory serves me correctly, while they did have travel/health insurance, it nowhere near lent itself to what they actually received courtesy of our public health department.

NO person in need of medical help is ever turned away from an Australian public hospital.

If you need emergent care here you will not be turned away either...

you said money was talked about... "it was the last thing talked about"

so they still had to pay the bill for the services...

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Specializes in Med/Surg/Ortho/HH/Radiology-Now Retired.

What I wrote was: "Any money dealings were the last things they talked about" , as in an expression of speech.

So no, they did not talk money.

The focus was on the patient being provided the healthcare he needed.

Did they pay any money???

From what was in the the newspaper article; no.

That's why they were so "blown away" by the care, the help etc etc.

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