Health and Sanity category archive

Susan comments on the Zuckerboard:

So many Facebooks. So little substance.

Listen to this lady’s story.

From the website:

BETH ANN SWAN is dean and professor at the Jefferson School of Nursing at Thomas Jefferson University. With 30 years working as a nurse clinician, researcher, educator and administrator, it would seem likely that she would be more able than most to navigate our complicated health care system, but after her husband Eric suffered a serious brain stem stroke while on a trip to Chicago, Swan learned first hand how challenging it can be for patients who are still recovering to transition from hospital to home. Swan has written about their experiences in an article, “Narrative Matters”, published in the November 2012 issue of Health Affairs. She joins us in this hour of Radio Times to talk about how fragmented the health care system can be, what she learned from being a caregiver and the valuable role nursing can play in assuring the health and well-being of patients. We’ll also hear from MARY NAYLOR of the University of Pennsylvania who has developed an innovative model of care relying on advanced practice nurses to help people make the difficult transition from hospital to home.

Follow the link or listen below:

This is twice my salary for my first full-time job:

Annual premiums for job-based family health insurance went up just 4 percent this year, but that’s no comfort with the price tag approaching $16,000 and rising more than twice as fast as wages.

The underspending rebate checks mandated by the ACA are starting to arrive.

Wonder how many insurance company country-club memberships will go begging?

Aetna told Averback, a freelance writer in Huntingdon Valley, that it was sending her the money because of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The law requires that insurers spend 80 percent of premium dollars on actual health care and quality improvement, not administration, or pay a rebate. (The threshold is 85 percent for plans with more than 50 people.)

In the Pennsylvania individual market, Aetna Life Insurance Co., which also sells health insurance, spent just 67.1 percent of the money collected from subscribers in 2011 on health care. Averback’s check was a rebate.

Once she realized that the check was real, she had another thought. “I guess that shows you how much they were ripping me off,” she said.

Papa John’s claims that providing health care for employees might cost as much at fourteen cents a pizza.

That’s too much for Colbert:

There has to be a line we do not cross. And it’s fourteen cents.

If we sit idly by while everyone gets access to doctors for fourteen cents a pizza, tomorrow it may be three cents a taco.

Via TPM.

Via Raw Story.

Hospital bill to rape victim for the post-rape examination.

Via Contradict Me.

Matt Miller expresses wonderment:

Only in America could a Democratic president pass Mitt Romney’s health plan and fund it partly through John McCain’s best idea from the last campaign (taxing some employer-provided plans) and be branded a “socialist.”

Still true:

. . . as I was in the previous post, score one for the forces of truth, justice, and the American way over thuggery.

Afterthought:

This is why I have generally ignored all the agonizing over how the decision would turn out.

PoliticalProf had to go to the doctor, which set him to wondering (emphasis added):

. . . I always knew two things: I have good insurance, and even if my insurance had not been accepted, I have money. I can pay to visit the doctor and get the immediate care I need.

What has struck me throughout the whole debate about healthcare in America is how few people like me . . . can then take the next step and ask: what if I didn’t have the money? What would I have done?

Read the rest.

In case you wondered why the Republican Party is adamantly opposed to reforming the US health care system, consider this bit from MarketWatch:

If the court decides the law is unconstitutional, high-income taxpayers would avoid a 3.8% tax hike on investment earnings, plus a 0.9% increase in their payroll taxes, come 2013.

For people in the top 1% of income earners, avoiding those two tax provisions would translate into savings of, on average, about $21,000 per year, according to the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute.

And the richest Americans — the top 0.1% — would avoid about $125,000 more in taxes per year on average if the health law is overturned.

It is living up to its core mission: to make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Making the poor sicker and the sick poorer is just collateral damage.

Via BartCop.

Thom explains why the rest of the world thinks we are crazy:

David Letterman:

Dick Cheney was talking to a reporter right after the surgery and he said he wants to live long enough to make sure nobody else gets healthcare.

The Denver Post talks with a Taiwanese immigrant who is aghast at the expense and inefficiency of the US health insurance industry. A nugget:

He’s figured that (not only that it’s more expensive, but that it doesn’t work very well–ed.) out already as well. “I found in total every year I have to pay $17,000 to the hospital and insurance company if I use maximum service. Compare $17,000 with $700, that’s 24 times difference.”

But he’s not going to get 24 times better health care, which he has discovered as well. “One day my daughter got sick. We sent her to hospital, and imagined this society has good hospitals and advanced technologies that exist to serve people. We waited from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. in emergency room. With this speed of service, I began to question my understanding of the word ’emergency.’?” He says that he looked it up, just to verify that “emergency” is the word for something that requires immediate action.

Read it.

Death panel.

Click for a larger image.

At the Guardian, an English reporter forced to visit the ER tells of his experience with U. S. health care. A nugget:

This is the difference that social medicine makes to the fabric and quality of life in a civilised country. When I finally wobbled out of the shiny lobby of the Beth Israel, clutching a bag of drugs, follow-up advice and complimentary hospital toiletries, I understood what it really means to be without means in America. Those who are wealthy enough to afford decent healthcare have their needs met in relative luxury, while those who are poor live in fear of getting ill, worrying that one misadventure might leave you with yet more debts to pay off.

No amount of fresh towels and edible breakfasts can make up for the feeling that your health is less important than the capacity of your chequebook.