All I want for Christmas is a single payer plan!

[CaLLaCoDe]

It's pretty hard to rebut anything this congressman says. He makes an argument for the right as well as for the left. I only wish we didn't have such a need to preserve the health insurance industry at our own health expense:

[mari55]

And the major reason the American dollar is in the toilet is because the US is in 2 wars. And we throw money at things instead of fixing them the first time. So now people want to throw more money at something without working out the particulars.

If Canadian healthcare is so great maybe we should ask the border states why they are doing a boom business with Canadian citizens.

I agree completely. Mari55

[areawoman]

To me, any healthcare reform that does not include tort reform is not reform.

[Onekidneynurse]

To me, any healthcare reform that does not include tort reform is not reform.

So if a drunk surgeon clips your spleen during surgery that would be ok with you? If a surgeon cuts off the wrong leg would that be ok with you? If your nurse runs your chemo too fast and your arm disintegrates that would be ok. I worked with a lady years ago at N.C. Memorial in Chapel Hill who got a vesicant too fast and I was doing wound care on her arm. Ligaments, ulna, and radius bones are not something I want to see close up ever again. And the lady didn't sue. I don't think she knew she could.

Maybe we should get rid of car insurance. If someone hits you head on; your on you own. What if your home owners decided not to pay a claim. Would you just suck it up?

Tort reform has been shown to have very little affect on healthcare costs. Maybe we could pay for everyone to go to med school. France does.

[RN4MERCY]

So what do the insured die of? Having insurance?

Nataline Sarkysian was covered by insurance. Ed Hanway, CEO of Cigna, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies, will step down next week. When he does, he'll get $73,200,000 as compensation for a job well done. What makes Hanway worth $73.2 million? Well, for one example, he's presided as Cigna denied a liver transplant to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, causing her death. Cigna, refused to pay for medically necessary care.

There are so many other healthcare horror stories; many of them from people who were "covered" by insurance at the onset of their illness or injury.

So, yes, onekidneynurse, most certainly insured patients will suffer from preventable complications of illness and die when their need for medically necessary care comes between them and their insurer's ability to make a profit. Insurers do not exist to provide care.

[RN4MERCY]

And the major reason the American dollar is in the toilet is because the US is in 2 wars. And we throw money at things instead of fixing them the first time. So now people want to throw more money at something without working out the particulars.

If Canadian healthcare is so great maybe we should ask the border states why they are doing a boom business with Canadian citizens.

Ahhh, another MYTH about the Canadian Medicare system. Actually, very few Canadians cross the border according to a scholarly article published in Health Affairs, a multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal. Such claims about phantom hoards of Canadian medical refugees are intellectually dead but they remain useful to some powerful insurance and pharmaceutical company special interests and will probably continue to be circulated regardless of the fact that they are not evidence-based.

According to the health affairs article:

-In the survey of 18,000 Canadians, only 90 reported receiving care in a US facility. Only 20 of them came to the US seeking care

-Greater than 80% of the hospitals reported seeing less than one patient per month.

-During the entire year, state hospitals in NY, MI and WA reported treated a total of 909 Canadian patients, only 17% of which were elective.

-Only one of "America's Best Hospitals" reported seeing more than 60 Canadians over the previous year.

Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds the care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.

[Onekidneynurse]

Nataline Sarkysian was covered by insurance. Ed Hanway, CEO of Cigna, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies, will step down next week. When he does, he'll get $73,200,000 as compensation for a job well done. What makes Hanway worth $73.2 million? Well, for one example, he's presided as Cigna denied a liver transplant to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, causing her death. Cigna, refused to pay for medically necessary care.

There are so many other healthcare horror stories; many of them from people who were "covered" by insurance at the onset of their illness or injury.

So, yes, onekidneynurse, most certainly insured patients will suffer from preventable complications of illness and die when their need for medically necessary care comes between them and their insurer's ability to make a profit. Insurers do not exist to provide care.

Again for every sob story you can give I have one. Currently we have a patient in the hospital cuz he has no where to live. This is the third time he's been in because of the same reason. And guess what SW is working on getting him another apartment to live independently. We have another patient who moved to NH from Cali because NH has better benefits for patients without a job or insurance. And he's had paper work to fill out to get HD outside the hospital but he didn't "bother" to fill them out. Getting 3 squares a day, free cable TV and a soft bed...... He's in his 50's.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

This was a beautiful 17 year old. Her parents paid Cigna premiums her entire life.

Her physicians wrote that she had a 60% chance of survival with the surgery but the insurance company denied it.

Then weeks later they approved it due to publicity.

To me this was an insurance company version of a death panel. Will the new legislation STOP this?

[RN4MERCY]

Again for every sob story you can give I have one. Currently we have a patient in the hospital cuz he has no where to live. This is the third time he's been in because of the same reason. And guess what SW is working on getting him another apartment to live independently. We have another patient who moved to NH from Cali because NH has better benefits for patients without a job or insurance. And he's had paper work to fill out to get HD outside the hospital but he didn't "bother" to fill them out. Getting 3 squares a day, free cable TV and a soft bed...... He's in his 50's.

Sob story?

had insurance and she was harmed--handed a death sentence by her insurer who refused to pay for medically necessary care. Her family paid the premiums and filled out the forms! Personally and professionally I am offended by your answer. I'm hopeful that wasn't your intent...to trivialize the harm being done to real people by an unnecessary, parasitic, maleficent health insurance industry and their corporate handmaidens in the House and Senate.

I've always understood nursing to be a caring profession. Caring encompasses a connection with and empathy for people. According to the AACN the core values fundamental to the profession of nursing are altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice. The caring professional nurse integrates these values in clinical practice. Rather than judging your brother who may be suffering from a mental illness, an addiction, (or both), remember that he is a human being who needs and deserves care.

There is no surer way to harm the dignity of an individual than to let him or her continue to think that their life has no value or no potential. It's one thing to point your finger and tell someone to straighten up and fly right, but what if they don't have the tools? Aren't you forgetting about Maslow's heirarchy of needs? Food, shelter, comfort/hygiene, clothing, a safe night's sleep, together with a kind smile, a warm therapeutic touch, empathetic direct eye contact and a professional visual and physical assessment, evaluation and treatment may be the first steps in helping him regain his health and become a more capable, less vulnerable member of society. It's not good enough to send someone out the door with a pat on the back, knowing full well that they have a self-care deficit with a prescription for medicine they can't afford or an appointment they can't keep. We can do better.

As a nation we can afford to have universal health care for everyone in this country. Again, it's important to point out that there are wealthy, powerful insurance and pharmaceutical corporate interests who exploit common myths that most of the uninsured are failures of personal responsibility who are merely "too lazy" to work, and who somehow deserve the illness or injury that befalls them. As health professionals we should know better. A single-payer system puts everyone in one risk pool.

There's a really great article posted on the Physicians for a National Health Program website that explains the social and economic benefits of such a system.

Risk pooling allows for cross-subsidizing, which means that at any given moment the least costly majority, roughly 80%, subsidizes the most costly minority, roughly 20%. We do not know who will be in that minority at any given moment, but we know that the division between those who need more or expensive care and those who need less or less costly care gravitates towards those proportions, which is why cross-subsidizing is critical to the system being not only financially sustainable as a system but also affordable to individuals and families participating in the system when they most need it, that is, when they need medical care.

[Onekidneynurse]

This was a beautiful 17 year old. Her parents paid Cigna premiums her entire life.

Her physicians wrote that she had a 60% chance of survival with the surgery but the insurance company denied it.

Then weeks later they approved it due to publicity.

To me this was an insurance company version of a death panel. Will the new legislation STOP this?

Probably not. I would bet some money that things will be worse. All medical care will be deemed needed only by it's intended outcome.... Sorry to say.

[Onekidneynurse]

Sob story?

had insurance and she was harmed--handed a death sentence by her insurer who refused to pay for medically necessary care. Her family paid the premiums and filled out the forms! Personally and professionally I am offended by your answer. I'm hopeful that wasn't your intent...to trivialize the harm being done to real people by an unnecessary, parasitic, maleficent health insurance industry and their corporate handmaidens in the House and Senate.

I've always understood nursing to be a caring profession. Caring encompasses a connection with and empathy for people. According to the AACN the core values fundamental to the profession of nursing are altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice. The caring professional nurse integrates these values in clinical practice. Rather than judging your brother who may be suffering from a mental illness, an addiction, (or both), remember that he is a human being who needs and deserves care.

There is no surer way to harm the dignity of an individual than to let him or her continue to think that their life has no value or no potential. It's one thing to point your finger and tell someone to straighten up and fly right, but what if they don't have the tools? Aren't you forgetting about Maslow's heirarchy of needs? Food, shelter, comfort/hygiene, clothing, a safe night's sleep, together with a kind smile, a warm therapeutic touch, empathetic direct eye contact and a professional visual and physical assessment, evaluation and treatment may be the first steps in helping him regain his health and become a more capable, less vulnerable member of society. It's not good enough to send someone out the door with a pat on the back, knowing full well that they have a self-care deficit with a prescription for medicine they can't afford or an appointment they can't keep. We can do better.

As a nation we can afford to have universal health care for everyone in this country. Again, it's important to point out that there are wealthy, powerful insurance and pharmaceutical corporate interests who exploit common myths that most of the uninsured are failures of personal responsibility who are merely "too lazy" to work, and who somehow deserve the illness or injury that befalls them. As health professionals we should know better. A single-payer system puts everyone in one risk pool.

There's a really great article posted on the Physicians for a National Health Program website that explains the social and economic benefits of such a system.

I've been in dialysis for over 15 years. NO patient that I know of has been refused a transplant because they couldn't pay. And yes, I'm aware that Medicare pays for HD but not in the first few months. And I do know for a fact that one patient has received 3 kidneys over the years. I believe there are 3 sides to every story, one story from the insurance company, one from the family and then the truth.

Where was the transplant team in this instance? Where were the social workers helping this patient? I can't believe that she was denied because her insurance company wouldn't pay. I just don't believe it. That was my contention in my answer.

Are you paying for someone's healthcare or their insurance? Are you an organ donor, do you donate blood, are you a bone marrow donor. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.

Every time and every place I've asked those who want UHC to take on a person and pay for their healthcare insurance or their medical bills that person has a reason why they can't do it.

As for this country being able to afford medical care for every person in the this country that might have been true at one time but it gets less and less true every day.

And I certainly haven't forgotten Maslow. That's another question I never get answered when questioning those who think we should have UHC. Somehow they forget the hungry and cold.

A single payor system run by our government at this point won't work.... That's the simple truth. Many do want or can't see it. I feel it's my duty to keep that truth alive as long as I can.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

dr. goran klintmalm, chief of the baylor regional transplant institute in dallas, said the operation that ucla wanted to perform was a "very high-risk transplant" and "generally speaking, it is on the margins."

but klintmalm said he would consider performing the same operation on a 17-year-old and believes the ucla doctors are among the best in the world.

"the ucla team is not a cowboy team," he said. "it's a team where they have some of the soundest minds in the industry who deliver judgment on appropriateness virtually every day." - http://www.residencynotes.com/2007/12/

this was discussed here at the time:

https://allnurses.com/nursing-activism-healthcare/17-year-old-268922.html

https://allnurses.com/social-health-care/real-show-outdoors-383252.html

doctors at ucla sent a letter dec. 11 to cigna emphasizing that nataline was eligible for a transplant, but cigna refused to pay, citing a lack of medical evidence the procedure would help.

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/healthcare-industry-policy-article/update-from-yesterday-s-story/485209

...ucla doctors put her on a list for a liver transplant dec. 6 and a liver became available four days later. her doctors told cigna in a letter that patients in similar situations had a 65% chance of living six months if they received a liver transplant.

but the transplant was not done because cigna deemed it experimental in nataline's case and refused to pay for it....

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/25/business/fi-cigna25

[Onekidneynurse]

this was discussed here at the time:

https://allnurses.com/nursing-activism-healthcare/17-year-old-268922.html

https://allnurses.com/social-health-care/real-show-outdoors-383252.html

i still believe there could have been a way for her to get a transplant. many docs do this and other procedures pro bono. and hospitals step up too.

also, let's remember this patient had leukemia and was in a vegetative state at the time. she had a bone marrow transplant also. who paid for all that medical care. could it have been cigna. and would there have been a back lash if she has gotten the transplant when another person died for lack of one and they may have been a better candidate?