Silversoul said:

Hip replacement is not an emergency.  I would expect to have to wait for something like that.  I guarantee if it was open-heart surgery, they'd book her right away.

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Prisoner#1 said:

they kept putting it off, on the 3rd day she got her shit together and
started to walk out to hit another hospital, they didnt want to lose all
the money for the over priced motel room so they stopped her and scheduled
the surgery... sometimes doctor shopping isnt about drugs

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It took me longer than that to get shards of glass that were broken off inside my body removed, and I ended up getting fucked by the insurance company in the end. The accident happened while I was on vacation from my job, and two weeks latter when I went back to work, I found out that I no longer had a job. Because of this my insurance company said they didn't have any responsibility to cover me for any medical treatment that happened beyond the last day that I had worked. It put me just under 10,000 dollars in debt...good times. If the hospital hadn't thought that I was insured at the time, they wouldn't even have treated me, because they didn't consider it an emergency situation.

I've spent the past two years working in the medical industry for a university, and the majority of my time was spent processing mass payments from insurance companies. The entire medical system in this country is fucked from all sides. A HUGE amount of the money spent on medical care goes to pay for absolute bullshit. Different departments within a hospital will get a certain amount of money budgeted to them for the fiscal year, and if they don't spend all of it administration takes that as a que to lower their budget for the next year. As a result of this there are literally people who sit around all fucking day trying to find shit to spend money on. I remember processing orders for thousands of pedometers to be handed out to people with the health care centers custom logo on it for no other reason than to use up a portion of the budget, spending over a thousand dollars of desk chairs, and several thousands of dollars for desks.

One of the things that pissed me off more than anything is that people in administrative positions would vie for different tasks to be assigned to their positions so that they could get another line on their resume, and a little bump in their paycheck. Then rather than doing the actual work, they pettion the business office for an increase in their teams budget to hire a new employee. After getting the money they would then hire someone under what is called OPS status. Basically it means that despite the fact that the person is doing a job that involves a high level of responsibility they are considered a temporary employee with no fixed end date on their employment contract. As a result of this they get paid pennies (usually only a few dollars above minimum wage) and they don't get health benefits...its funny right, people working in a fucking hospital without health benefits.

Did you know that for every medical professional (doctors, nurses, nurses assistants, physical therapist etc...) there is an average minimum of 12 office support workers? Most of them have to do with the processing of medical records and insurance payments, and none of them actually work more than an hour or so a day despite getting paid for a full day. It really only takes one or two people to deal with insurance processing, but instead you end up with a clusterfuck of an office filled with them; one person to take the patients information, one person to verify it, one person to receive the mass payments from the actual insurance company, several people to post the payments to the various patients acounts. Its fucking bullshit, and we as patients are the ones that are incurring the cost.

All of this shit goes on because healthcare is a for profit industry in this country. Going out of your way to complicate the process raises the intimate cost of health care, and increases the revenue for the entire industry. It's how you further your career, it's like there's a bunch of greedy motherfuckers trying to push a rock uphill, but instead of working together on the task their all vying for the spot on the rock thats the easies to push.


^^^^Writing a letter that was supposed to be anonymous(though more intelligently and professionally worded) just like this post is the reason I no longer have a job.

blewmeanie said:

I could go on and on about the bullshit and corruption in the health care industry for pages.

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stedenko said:

2 years for a hip replacement

http://www.ted.com/talks/allison_hunt_gets_a_new_hip.html

Gonna find more...

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blewmeanie said:

I could go on and on about the bullshit and corruption in the health care industry for pages.

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Amen brother.

Someone needs to expose the waste that is rampant within the medical field

I had a 5 day stay in the hospital. All they did was give me painkillers till my pancreatitis went away.

Five days = $20,000



I could have bought 5 days worth of heroine and not spent as much

blewmeanie said:

Basically they end up paying around 30 dollars for someone to enter their name into a the system, and hit the print key. The cost isn't their to cover the actual cost of the service being provided, it's there to discourage the patient from obtaining their records.

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rodfarva said:

It can take weeks/months to get an MRI in France, but for about $500 you can buy a private scan and take the results to your nearly free brain surgeon and be treated.

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Quote:

In the US with private insurance you will get your MRI in a day and then spend three years waiting for insurance or the FDA to approve treatment.

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Quote:

If you don't have insurance, you better not be bitching when you cant afford $3mill 30 day hospital stays much less an MRI. I suppose next people are going to start bitching about doctors not making enough money in canada?

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Quote:

Exactly how many vertebrae/ribs do you lack to be able to stick your heads so far up your asses you cant see the sun?

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Silversoul said:

blewmeanie said:

I could go on and on about the bullshit and corruption in the health care industry for pages.

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Please do.  I think Pris really needs to hear this.

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