coming healthcare nightmare scenario

[northernlights]

When I returned to school for a 2nd degree -- this one in Med Lab Tech -- employment was 100% at the back end, with a worldwide shortage. The Dept. Head told us she'd been contacted by Mass General and asked to increase the MLT slots (15) because they liked the lab techs from the program so much.

That was then. This is now. I'm about to enter my final semester, clinical training, in January. A couple weeks ago, the program director -- unaware that the microphone was ON -- accidentally revealed that hospitals that would take 4 students in training in the past are only reluctantly taking 2. Those that took 2 may take 1. Many hospitals have apparently not yet responded -- 6 weeks to go, 2 of them holiday weeks!

The nearest hospital to me has cancelled *all* open reqs and laid off 3 (all managers!). They also reported that their charity cases doubled last year.

The 2nd nearest hospital has had ongoing layoffs for a couple years now, including nurses and other delivery staff. They've agreed to take 1. There are 2 of us in the area -- we both have 4.0s, but he has a really, really poor tardy and attendance record. I feel bad -- it's not 100% his fault, but it is what it is. As long as we pass this semester, they *have* to give us clinical spots and the fallback is the state hospital (not too far either, but very unlikely to lead to employment if a huge portion of us end up there).

Also, a new hospital in the area got approved last week BUT it's a replacement, not addition. And it's going to have FEWER BEDS because they plan on SHORTENING STAYS...again.

Be prepared to be sent home groggy, in pain, half-alive, and needed a lot of help and outpatient followup. That is the future for those who have insurance, anyway...

[Kennah]

1. And when some go home ...

... it will be to a cardboard and wood pallet shack alongside the railroad tracks.

[CoffeeCat]

2. That's how I felt nine years ago...

...when I had back surgery for a ruptured disc. I was five months pregnant when I had this back
surgery. I was very weak, exhausted and in so much pain--but I was forced to walk the halls the
day after my surgery. The orderly who walked around with me kept apologizing, and saying that
they liked to rush people out and if they could get you to do certain things--then you were
determined well enough to go home.

I walked that hall. But it was like a death march. I was sent home the next day. I was
so scared. Like you said exactly, I felt like I was being sent home in such a vulnerable
state--half alive.

I never thought I'd see the day when things would be WORSE.

What a shame that we never got healthcare reform.

[northernlights]

7. holy effing crap

that is horrible. just horrible. I'm so sorry you were put through that torture. What the *hell* have we come to? :hug:

[Warpy]

19. They did you a favor

because allowing bedrest after surgery is the quickest way to ensure complications like pneumonia and blood clots, both of which can turn fatal very quickly.

You might have thought he was a meanie for making you walk, but that's why he was doing it, even if he didn't have the education it requires for him to know that.

Even if we suddenly get Medicare for all and hospitals realize that they need to staff, your care wouldn't change in that case. Getting you up prevents complications. Getting you out ASAP decreases the risk for infections.

[pokercat999]

21. I agree, painful but necessary. I just had back surgery Monday

Nov 15th about 7 PM at night. I was never actually admitted to the hospital but spent the night in a private room and was allowed to leave about 2 PM the next afternoon...less than 24 hours! But before I could go I had to walk up and down the hall and even up and down some stairs, with a escort of course. My wife is a hospital employee but I'm sure that got no special treatment for me. Everyone was very nice and helpful. They even got a roll-away bed for my wife to stay overnight. By Thursday I actually started to walk around the house unassisted and tomorrow my son will set up the treadmill/clothes hanger, downstairs so my "trips" will become much longer. With work and the help of the medical staff my last 18 months of increasing pain and disability will be at an end soon and I can go back to work. Even with the pain and limits of an very new four inch incision in my lower back I can feel the positive difference.

[defendandprotect]

3. MEDICARE FOR ALL would have created 2.3 million jobs .....

feel very badly for you and any others who are losing opportunities for employment --

but this medical system we have deserves to completely crash - and unfortunately

forcing people to pay for health care insurance -- which isn't health care -- is going

to prop it up for a while!

We're last I heard 37th in health care in this nation -- must be much worse now???

[diane in sf]

4. We're 49th in life expectancy now.

[Walk dont run]

5. Not the change I had in mind

No health care bill would be better than the one Reid and Pelosi gave us. Just got my insurance bill for November. Rates up again. Also got my house insurance bill, 35% increase over last year. My property taxes also are higher next year, 700 dollars MORE.

Sure glad we don't have any inflation,
That taxes won't go up a single dime if I make less than $250,000. (I can't even think that big)

The tax policy and healthcare reform is hurting me. That's a fact. I won't blame Obama on the taxes, but sure as heck will on the skyrocketing cost of my health insurance. They gotta get more money to pay for the people that have pre-existing conditions. I'm the piggy bank they are getting the money from.

Nancy should have named the Bill, "The health insurer growth with profitability act".

[Schema Thing]

8. how is the healthcare reform hurting you?

[northernlights]

11. there was no "healthcare" reform -- only health INSURANCE gift

and re-read the post. It's right there in B&W. HEALTH INSURANCE RATES WENT UP.

[Schema Thing]

12. yes, as they have been doing for a very long time.

that doesn't mean they went up as a result of healthcare reform.

In fact, it will lower cost of insurance.

[northernlights]

13. oh please, go back to GD for a while. They have been cranking double digits ever since HCR passed

Cite one shred of evidence that Obama's HCR will *ever* lower the cost of insurance.

Or take a look at Massachusetts, since Obamacare was modeled on Romneycare -- a totally disastrous, failure of a program. Massachusetts is now looking at *suing* people who can't afford the $2,000 penalty for not buying health insurance. Rates there skyrocketed after Romneycare was put into effect some 6 or 7 years ago. And their uninsured rate went up too, although as usual the numbers get doctored.

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/healthcare/view/20101118states_study_massachusetts_health-care_law/srvc=business&position=also

"It’s all eyes on Massachusetts’ first-in-the-nation universal health care, as Americans come to terms with their own future under President Obama’s universal health-care legislation.

The Herald reported yesterday that Bay State officials have hired private lawyers to sue people who claim they can’t afford health care and can’t pay the $2,000 fines they were levied."

Read some of the comments afterwards. From the citizens of Massachusetts who have been living this nightmare for some time now.

Thank the gods and goddesses I left there right when they were putting that shit law through. I saw an interview of a GP a couple years ago. She works 7 days/week, all day every day, and can't keep up. Her staff reported people beg, crying, to be added to her client list.

At least the way things are for me now, I can go to a GP and get taken care of for cash. Which is what I had to do when I had Harvard Pilgrim and they left me to die from an impacted wisdom tooth infection gone septic. Thousands of dollars in premiums and the fuckers were too cheap to do a simple CBC. 80 pounds with major, major symptoms, and they fucking claimed septicemia was all in my head. It could have entered an organ at any time and killed me within hours.

Romneycare is a fucking disaster. The insurance scumbags are thieves. They deliver zero added value. NOTHING. They just take the money and fucking run. And Obamacare is an equal disaster.

[Kat45]

14. I'm in MA. Romneycare is not a "totally disastrous failure of a program"

I've been unemployed or barely employed for the past two years, and I am eternally grateful for the MA health care system. I've been getting insurance through the state, very low cost. If it wasn't for "Romneycare," I'd be shit out of luck and not be able to get any medical care at all. And because I'm a single person with no kids, I am not eligible for Medicaid in this state. Yes, there are problems because the cost of health care keeps rising, but that's true everywhere. BTW, the newspaper you are quoting, The Boston Herald, is a right-wing rag.

[northernlights]

15. when I lived in Mass, Harvard Pilgrim left me to die

declared septicemia to be 'all in my head' without even a CBC.

Romneycare simply takes healthcare away from one person and gives it to a different one. So a different set of people gets sick and dies. Just because you happen to be on the receiving end right now, doesn't mean there isn't someone out there who lost their health care.

Are you suggesting that because the Boston Herald is right wing, the state *isn't* suing people who can't afford their mandated health insurance or the $2,000 fine?

[nightgaunt]

22. Gingrich-Romney-Obama and its the Democrats fault?

Four years after Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to require all residents to have health insurance, Connector spokesman Richard Powers said with 97 percent of Massachusetts taxpayers insured, the program so far has been an overwhelming success. Officials are now trying to lower health-care costs. “If the rest of the nation is as lucky as Massachusetts, the entire country will be better off,” he said.

But Cannon disagreed: “It was sold as a way to cover uninsured and then reduce cost of health care. It has covered some previously uncovered people, but not as many as the commonwealth claims they have covered, and the cost of health care is rising, by every measure, while the quality is falling.”

With out the protection of a gov't option and no restraints on the health care corps, they can continue to raise rates. And don't be fooled by all the talk by the right to stop this. They secretly like it and will do little to actually affect it. Just watch and see.

I'm glad to see you got what you needed Kat45, but its all the others who still don't have what they need is the problem. If we wound down our wars of profit we could retrain our soldiers (after they get their treatments) and so many of the other millions of unemployed to work in the hospitals we need to build to handle all the people not being helped right now. In fact they are limiting or closing ER's and hospitals. Not a good trend for morbidity survival. Expect life expectancy to continue to go down. Lower if they don't count those millionaires and billionaires whose life expectancy is much higher and gooses the curve up.

[Crazy Dave]

17. Rec+

It amazes me how people keep making up excuses for Obamacare when it's so obvious that it only benefits the insurance companies. What makes anybody think the price will go down if the government forces you to pay for it? Another thing that's been hidden and most people aren't paying attention too, the deductables and co-pays are going to be so high that most lower and middle class won't be able to afford them.

The only way prices will go down is if they go up real high first like when gas was over $4 a gallon back in 2008. People were getting hit so bad in the wallet that when prices went down to $3 everyone was happy to be paying it.

In the past two years just the percentage amount of the increases I've had on my health premiums is over three times what I paid for my entire family's premiums ten years ago. Maybe under Obama's plan I'll get a $5 total reduction in yearly premiums.

[defendandprotect]

9. While I still consider it "deform" ... it was made worse by the delay in starting ... which

gave the insurers time to hike up their rates again --

50 million now without health care!!

We don't need insurance -- we need medical care --

We need to get insurance companies OUT of medical care and everyone knows that!!

:)

[Crazy Dave]

10. Don't have inflation?

Just because the government says we don't have inflation doesn't mean it's true. They're always 10 - 12 months behind figuring out what's really going on and then making it official. Anyone who has been supporting a family can tell you that their weekly grocery bill has gone up 30% than two years ago. The food packages keep getting smaller while the prices keep getting higher.

[northernlights]

6. feeling bad for us is one thing

any suggestions on how we pay back our student loans? Not to mention live?

I've been trying to sell my house for 2 years now. It's homesteaded in for almost $50K and will be for $97K when I turn 60 in 3 years. If I can sell it I can pay off the loans and downsize in this state without losing the homesteading. But there is no market to sell to...

There is no particular healthcare tuition reimbursement program in this particular state for MLTs (only for nurses and doctors.) There are one or two that look promising...but on the other side of the country. It's something I would like to do -- probably working on an Indian reservation. In fact, it was one of my motivating factors when I took this education on and remembering that keeps me going during the really really hard times. I will be looking into that during our 2 week break over the holidays...

If everything really falls apart next summer, I may just transfer to loans to my credit cards and let *them* take the hit when I go down :rofl:

[jtuck004]

16. Why wait?

"I may just transfer to loans to my credit cards and let *them* take the hit when I go down"

I think that's a great idea - but you want to give it some time and payments b4 you ditch them.

[Delphinus]

20. "Health insurance is not health care"

has been my mantra for years. It also falls on deaf ears.

[Warpy]

18. It's been my present for over two decades

and the Republicans are trying their damnedest to make it permanent, that denial of health insurance to anyone who has had the bad luck to get sick.

I've survived it only because I became an RN. If I hadn't known danger signs and when to go to a clinic versus go to an ER, I'd be dead now.

Really.