noodle

I just saw Sicko last night... well, most of it because the end was missing from the copy we got. I recognize that this is a little off topic, but I got so frustrated at my SO's reaction. Maybe this belongs in the other Sicko thread, I honestly didn't read it yet. My SO works for BCBS in the computer part and has no idea what I have to deal with on a daily basis with my kids. He was floored and upset at the stories from France. "We should live there," was one of his first responses after a few days ago having a conversation about taxes and not having access to so many of our "rightfully owned" money. So, here goes....

Okay, I work with dying kids so I'm a little skewed in my views of the insurance companies. But one of the things that I've learned to appreciate about the Un-Great State of Florida is that as long as you are paying something comparable to your income you cannot be sued or sent to collections for medical bills. For example, there was a mother I worked with who spent 9 days on life support in a hospital. She had Medicaid and Social Security... which obviously doesn't like Life-Supportesque treatments... and since her income was less than $1100 for two people, she was only required to pay $5 a month to the hospital after the insurance paid their paltry percentage. Medicaid sucks ass. I refuse to give them any credit because I'm tired of $147 a day to pay for a child on Hospice's services. But, I have to give the industry credit... they knew that they would never get the full close-to-a-million-dollars back that they were unable to choke out of Medicaid and Medicare for a COPD patient. But they took her $5 a month as what she could pay. Her medication copays were almost $500 per month so she didn't take half of them so she could afford her psychotic 10-year-old son's meds. It was one of the saddest situations I'd ever dealt with... and it wasn't in my current field. She worked her ass off in minimum-wage jobs from the time she was 15 until she got sick and actually felt guilty living in Section 8 housing and getting SSDI. And yet, her insurance wouldn't take care of her.

Now, I work with kids who have "potentially life-limiting illnesses". This being cancer, MS, cerebal palsy, every kind on encephalopathy you can imagine, short-gut syndrome... all of it. It makes me ill how the insurance companies suck the life out of these families. And how some of the families who were lucky enough to have the knowledge to get on a list somewhere end up with free diapers while others can't afford medication co-pays. Florida has a piss-poor setup for these chronic kids and one paperwork error can deny them coverage and create a pre-existing condition in a heartbeat. Honestly, I don't know how much better, financially, these chronic families could make it in other countries... the chronic kids didn't end up in the section of the movie that I watched. I have to fight to remind Aetna that chemotherapy can relieve pain and that, yes, the doctor AND the family know that the kid is dying and that the chemo won't save them. Try to get palliative care covered by insurance companies. It would be amusing if it wasn't so sad. They care nothing about trying to keep kids out of the hospital by providing home visits by nurses that will save an ER visit or primary care visit when that nurse can do the exam and consult with a physician. Oh, crap. This is my soapbox and it makes me very angry. To see some of it laid out makes me feel a little vindicated but also annoyed at what was left out. So, I'll jump off my soapbox and just be glad that at least Michael Moore was able to make people question the current situations in healthcare.

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