a future with no more chemo

Phoebesnow said:

Insurance

Kaiser Permante.  They are wonderful.  If I lived in Colorado I would be paying only320.00.

thanks.... will look into it..probably cannot change after all i have had but worth a look...   sephie

LaCh said:

sandysp

I'm on Medicare and am insured by a Medicare Advantage Plan (it's a regular insurer with a subplan reserved for Medicare recipients). The coverage is better than regular Medicare but that's not syaing much since Medicare sucks.  Many providers don't accept Medicare or even Medicare Advantage Plans because their reimbursement is low. So here I am, a 5 minute walk from one of the most preeminent cancer centers on the planet, but I couldn't go to them because they don't accept my insurance.  I wasn't concerned that they knew things that no one else did for treatment of the tumor that I had, I wanted to use them because I knew that when I got sick from the treatments, getting there would be easier then getting to the place I ended up using.  I remember back in 2010, laying on a gurney in the ER, sick, in pain, vomiting, feverish, being told that the CT scan that I'd reluctantly agreed to undergo (reluctant, because of the copay) revealed that I had to have my appendix out immediately, and my only question was "Does the surgeon accept my insurance? Does the anesthesioligist?"  Are these questions one should have to ask when they're sick/injured/compromised? Yes, the answer is yes, here in America. And then, because I had a $175/day inpatient copayment for simply sitting in the bed, I checked myself out 12 hours after I left the recovery room.  You tell these kinds of stories to people who live in countries with socialized medicine and they're just flabberghasted.  So what exactly did Obama do?  He icluded more people into our shameful, exploitative, ineffective, greedy system.  And I supported the guy, so it's not like I'm anti-Obama. My take on the article in Time, one of the best I've ever read, about why our health care costs are what they are, was, "if Steven Brill (the article's author) knows this stuff, Obama must know this stuff, and if he didn't, he should have. In any case, he knows it now." So has he addressed it? Has he uttered a word about it? Can he? Will he?  The answer is no to all, because the lobbyists run the country, not the politicians, local, state or federal, nor you nor me.  Expecting change is like asking the richest man on the planet to willingly give up his wealth, disperse it equally and step away from the system that made him so rich and then for him to implement a system that's guaranteed to be fair for the masses but keep him among them.  In a word, the reason we're in this situation is one thing only. Greed. No more, no less. And the inability or unwillingness to engage it, dismantle it and replace it. Until that changes, this is the system that we'll have. It's truly shameful. There's a word in Spanish. It has no exact translation, but the word is sinvergüenza and it means, more or less, shameless. Without concience.  Above it all. It applies to our medical care system and those who support it, advocate for it, fight for it, exploit it, and will do anything and everything to make sure it continues unchanged and unchallenged. 

So well put LaCh!
 

So well put LaCh!