I feel like we are rapidly reaching jump ship level. My own sister (in her 40s with 4 kids and natural born Texas/US citizen) is actively migrating her family to Canada next year. Her daughter with a clef pallet cost her family 90K last year WITH insurance. Her husband makes $150K a year, so they managed...but Christ! My sister is so serious that she already submitted all her immigration papers and is waiting to hear back.
I work in a clinic. The ER at the hospital I work for has sent critical patients to our clinic because they 1) apparently have no staff that know how to evaluate for a emergency (I say this having 8 years ER experience under my belt). I had a patient go to the ER twice in 24 hours for urinary pain, bleeding 1 week post op. They sent him to the clinic pale AF, orthostatic blood pressure 80/40, bladder scan showed 330 after voiding (ended up being a giant number of clots that I got to try to hand irrigate in the OFFICE!). The ER did a UA at both visits and NOTHING ELSE.
You might want to say this is my institution in particular...however I haven't held a job at 1 institution for more than 3 years. I've traveled. So, yes, there are better and worse.....but they are ALL getting worse. Process improvement usually involve trying to make up care gaps with unlicensed, under educated, unqualified people OR have one qualified person do the work of 3-4 people (both of which create gross care gaps).
I wish I could go with my sister. This has only gotten worse in the 15 years I've been a nurse. I'm not proud of my field.
Wait what? Beans would be an excellent choice for protein, fiber and lots of good nutrients. Is it the whole can your objecting to? They don't need to be eaten all at once.
But diabetics don't count protein, fiber and lots of the other goodies; they depend on honest carbohydrate counts so can eat beans only in small amounts. People still have to buy the expensive proteins. Here is your quote:
coffeeismydrugofchoice said:
well yes and no... A can of beans is significantly cheaper than either turkey or salami...And perhaps if you had eaten more of those over your lifetime you would not need to be spending most of your income on insulin...
So yes, you are correct that a can of beans is significantly less than turkey or salami but a diabetic can't life on beans or anything else that filled with carbs. But then you went even further when you link eating beans to needing less insulin. No, eating beans will not protect folks from needing insulin. There are REASONS that poverty is linked to diabetes and the lack of beans isn't one of them.
Some 57% said at least one-tenth of their monthly budget goes toward health care.
Forty-three percent of those in employer-sponsored health insurance, which is the largest source of insurance coverage in the U.S., said they had difficulty affording care.
Of those with insurance, people who bought their own coverage — including on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces — had the toughest time affording care (57%).
"We found that insurance did not appear to protect many people sufficiently from the budget squeeze," said Commonwealth vice president Sara Collins, the lead study author.
Uninsured adults still report the highest rates of being unable to afford health care and accruing medical debt.
High health care costs are making Americans sicker, the survey found.
Almost 40% of adults reported skipping or putting off health care in the past year because they couldn't afford it. Of this group, 57% said their health worsened as a result.
About 3 in 10 adults said health care costs made it harder to pay for food and utilities, regardless of their coverage status.
Our system is broken, dangerous and unsustainable while also being the most expensive in the world.
Canada had very big problems as well.Less cost but less care.
They don't need as much care than we do because they are healthier and live longer than us without it. I've never talked to a Canadian who would forgo their system for ours.
Specializes in Surgical Specialty Clinic - Ambulatory Care.
jobellestarr said:
This is useless information that further points out how bad healthcare is. If I Google search how much an MRI of the knee costs on average, Google says it costs $500-$2000.
In 2017 my husband's knee suddenly became very swollen. I got him a same day appointment with his PCP who sent us next door to the hospital for a STAT MRI. My insurance company said they would not cover the cost of this emergent MRI because we went to a hospital that was apparently "blacked out" of our insurance plan. Like I figured the hospital was not in-network, I had no idea insurance companies could just plain not agree to pay for care at certain facilities. His PCP told us that is where we needed to go so he could get the results right away. He was teying to do right by his patient and keep him out of the emergency room.
The hospital sent us a bill for $6,000.
One cannot simply Google an estimated price of service and be anything close to accurate. One has an easier time estimating the value of a used car online than they do medical care. Furthermore, you cannot take the initiative at most hospitals and call ahead for an estimate. Hospitals make quotes like these incredibly time consuming to get and the estimates are often not even close to what they actually charge for services. An average patient does not know enough about services being provided to them to catch errors in a bill themselves and often are stuck between their insurance company and the hospital when insurances deem the service is not necessary, but the service has already happened. The hospital isn't going to be out the cost so they bill the patient.
Also, to get assistance trying to fix a bill or ask questions about ones bill is a lengthy process that most working class people have to do extreme things like take off days of work to deal with.
This is useless information that further points out how bad healthcare is. If I Google search how much an MRI of the knee costs on average, Google says it costs $500-$2000.
In 2017 my husband's knee suddenly became very swollen. I got him a same day appointment with his PCP who sent us next door to the hospital for a STAT MRI. My insurance company said they would not cover the cost of this emergent MRI because we went to a hospital that was apparently "blacked out" of our insurance plan. Like I figured the hospital was not in-network, I had no idea insurance companies could just plain not agree to pay for care at certain facilities. His PCP told us that is where we needed to go so he could get the results right away. He was teying to do right by his patient and keep him out of the emergency room.
The hospital sent us a bill for $6,000.
One cannot simply Google an estimated price of service and be anything close to accurate. One has an easier time estimating the value of a used car online than they do medical care. Furthermore, you cannot take the initiative at most hospitals and call ahead for an estimate. Hospitals make quotes like these incredibly time consuming to get and the estimates are often not even close to what they actually charge for services. An average patient does not know enough about services being provided to them to catch errors in a bill themselves and often are stuck between their insurance company and the hospital when insurances deem the service is not necessary, but the service has already happened. The hospital isn't going to be out the cost so they bill the patient.
Also, to get assistance trying to fix a bill or ask questions about ones bill is a lengthy process that most working class people have to do extreme things like take off days of work to deal with.
If you read the whole thread you'd realize what the discussion was. One person was disputing that the cost could be so high as another poster was saying it could be. It wasn't meant to be an actual estimate but rather to show how expensive cleft palate surgery could be. So, anywhere from 5000 to hundreds of thousands.
House Bills 4550-4552, known together as the Safe Patient Care Act, would also put an end to mandatory overtime for registered nurses, with exceptions for declared emergencies. Unlike truck drivers and pilots, nurses have no limit on the number of hours they can be compelled to work, despite research that they're more likely to make critical errors when exhausted or sleep-deprived.
Lastly, the bill package would set reporting requirements for health systems to publicly disclose their ratios.
"Unsafe working conditions in our hospitals have led to a deterioration in care for Michigan patients,” said Rep. Stephanie Young, D-Detroit, who sponsored one of the three bills. Similar bills have been introduced in the state Senate.
"Nurses who are being worked to exhaustion are voting with their feet and leaving the bedside in droves, creating a downward spiral with no end in sight.”
My hubby is a truck driver. I agree that there should be a limit for direct patient care providers just as there is truck drivers, pilots, etc, unless there's a declared emergency of course. That, along with safe staffing, would go a long way in keeping staff at the bedside
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Hoosier_RN said:
My hubby is a truck driver. I agree that there should be a limit for direct patient care providers just as there is truck drivers, pilots, etc, unless there's a declared emergency of course. That, along with safe staffing, would go a long way in keeping staff at the bedside
The health business model has involved minimal bedside staffing for decades. When I first started working as an RN, it was nurses who decided how many staff were needed to provide care for patients on a hospital nursing unit. The first step in reducing contact hours with nurses was to turn hospitalized people into numbers. They became a calculation rather than a name and diagnosis with a plan of care. Back in the day we mused about the bean counters taking responsibility for poorly staffed nursing units. We were naive, nurses still retain responsibility even though they don't make the baseline decisions about nursing staffing.
This USA health business model makes some people lots of money but that comes at the expense of patient outcomes and the well being of the professional ESSENTIAL to any inpatient care setting, registered nurses.
"Adults in the United States with lower and average incomes are more likely to struggle to afford their health care than people with similar incomes in most other wealthy countries," according to a news release from the Commonwealth Fund.
The new data is based on 2023 responses to the organization's International Health Policy Survey.
It polled people living in nine affluent nations (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) on whether they faced financial barriers when making everyday health care decisions.
The survey found that regardless of their household income, Americans were more likely to experience issues accessing care than residents of the other eight nations.
Quote
Nearly half (44%) of American adults said they'd had trouble paying a medical bill over the past year. Sometimes this meant falling behind in payments, but often people said they'd gotten swamped with paperwork or entangled in disputes around medical bills.
"Surprise" medical bills, or insurance coverage that didn't meet expectations was also common, the report found.
You'd think that the world's biggest economy and most successful democracy on the planet could do better.
Living in a city just south of Canada (that should be a giveaway as to where I am), the neighboring Canadian city lacks a minimally serviceable health care infrastructure, their nurses would rather cross the border than work at home and they all shun Canadian care and bring themselves and their families across the bridge when they're sick. Having said that, if she's paying $90K AFTER insurance I can't blame her, but I don't think emigrating to Canada is easy. The whole world is sneaking into the US but Canada doesn't play that.
subee, MSN, CRNA
1 Article; 6,116 Posts
But diabetics don't count protein, fiber and lots of the other goodies; they depend on honest carbohydrate counts so can eat beans only in small amounts. People still have to buy the expensive proteins. Here is your quote:
coffeeismydrugofchoice said:
well yes and no... A can of beans is significantly cheaper than either turkey or salami...And perhaps if you had eaten more of those over your lifetime you would not need to be spending most of your income on insulin...
So yes, you are correct that a can of beans is significantly less than turkey or salami but a diabetic can't life on beans or anything else that filled with carbs. But then you went even further when you link eating beans to needing less insulin. No, eating beans will not protect folks from needing insulin. There are REASONS that poverty is linked to diabetes and the lack of beans isn't one of them.