This short video high-lights how the Blue Cross Medical Insurance company dropped the coverage for Robin Beaton of Texas.
An estimated 40-45 millions don't have health coverage. The highest percentage of uninsured Americans for any state is Texas, with 22 percent of its population out of luck if they suffer a serious illness. (They could go to an emergency room, that's true, but try and get ongoing cancer treatment in an emergency room.)
Hers is just one of many situations that cry out for real reform of the American health care industry. Much of the fear and shouting you see from those who attend Congressional town meetings I believe come from peopel who are afraid they,too, will suffer the fate of this women when they need coverage the most. The irony of this is that many who blindly trust private health providers do not seem to appreciate that once they are a liability to the shareholders of a for-profit medical combine, they might be kicked to the curb as Ms. Beaton has been.
SAVED.
ReplyDeleteThis is a crime. They took her money for years then when she needed them they dropped her - in the full knowledge that if she doesn't get this treatment she could die. First Degree Murder anyone?
ReplyDeleteI know a woman who has no insurance - she was never treated for the breast-cancer with which she was diagnosed at the same time she got pregnant.
ReplyDeleteNow, she's racing the clock - hoping she can deliver before she dies.
In any sane nation, this would be considered such a monstrous wrong that it would defy description. In America, however, this is business as usual.
It flatly amazes me, the number of working-class conservative Americans who are sticking up for these insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
These are people who "fall through the cracks" in our system all the time. And, yes, if an ordinary person denied a sick person life-sustaining aid it WOULD be a crime. But Blue Cross/Blue Shield gets away with this--for now.
ReplyDeleteI take that as positive feedback, Melanie.
ReplyDeleteIt is absolutely crazy and immoral, Astra. And yes when I see these regular people in danger of being left without help like that poor lady it boggledmy mind,too. Supporting a current system that would ditch a sick person because she lacks insurance(???)
ReplyDeleteIt seems unfathomable to me why these people are yelling.
I guess thirty years of Reagan-omics (for lack of a better term) have made a lot of folks afraid of anything with a government stamp on it.
I wish to mention Doug that this has actually caused a reaction within most all industrialized countries I was doing some reading and there is not perfect system. Yet there can be a way in which this is done in a manner that is fitting within the USA.
ReplyDeleteFor myself I feel that certainly there are people that don't have coverage. And it's a crime that in such a strong country this exists. However that all said, my hopes are that this is not pushed down the throats and that it's worked upon in a suitable way and time so that it does work for all. But the numbers and the money it's a very complex situation and I would ponder on what all is within this bill for reform. As there has been more coverage on this than George Bush going into Iraq. And many are very angry within America.
But all things come with good time and good thought.
I tend to look at the pharmaceutical companies and how there can be something done with them first...
When you talk about a system that represents 16 percent of the US domestic economy, Jack, I agree all the main players have to be careful and through and not dither but not rush either.
ReplyDeleteI have a pharmaceutical rep amongst my friends. Many of these companies are flush with profits. I wish they would concentrate on R & D and less on television ads for their drugs.
Isn't there an oath doctors take?
ReplyDeleterush this needed to be done 20 yrs. ago when insurance companies really became KING and when anyone tells me we don't need reform ot lets do it slowly then read all these horrific stories-also when you get laid of and try to get insurance you know how much it costs in Ca for a 40yr. old only problen a slight underthyroid with a 40 dollar upfront pay and a 5000.dollyr deductible are you ready 620-dollars okay maybe to some of you that is nothing but when unemployed thet is a huge amount-
ReplyDeleteoh I get so frustrated latly I could just scream at all the igorant people out there-
And people prefer this system?
ReplyDeleteI have been a victim of insurance company shady practice in repudiating a claim. That however was for property not my life. Whilst it may just be business to the corporation, it's that poor womans life. How can any thing like this be permitted in a sophisticated country like America?
I guess there isn't a human face to health-care anymore. Even holiday health insurance will try to get out of paying if they see a loop hole. I don't think things are as bad here, as long as we can hold onto the dear old National Health. One can see where our fingernails have been as we hold on tight. I don't really trust politicians to keep promises in this field. We have struggled to keep hospitals open amid promises that it will happen. Once the party get in, the place is closed and there seems to be no one listening anymore. Maybe we as a people are too easy going. How many of us kick up a fuss, we usually leave it to someone else, but maybe we need to raise a storm?
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed insurance offices are the best buildings? One wonders what they spend our money on.
Diagnoses of a life threatening illness is a dark and frightening place to be. For their sake maybe we all need to shout much louder and show we want something done and no more excuses!
Yep, easy when written down, almost impossible in action.
Cassandra
Exactly.
ReplyDeleteCome on over to my place and take a look at some of the comments (good and bad) on the subject. It's been a fascinating debate for the last day.
my place to and some awful things have been said sad really
ReplyDeleteHere's an update on Robin Beaton from this month (from Blogspot website)
ReplyDelete"By October, thanks to an intervention from her member of Congress, Blue Cross reinstated Beaton's insurance coverage. But the tumor she had removed had grown 2 centimeters in the meantime, and she had to have her lymph nodes removed as well as her breasts amputated because of the delay.
"Beaton was a victim of both the "Death Panel" at Blue Cross and their corporate stop-loss department and an insurance industry ploy known as "rescission" where your insurance is retroactively cancelled because their corps of clerks manages to find something, anything in your medical records to give them reason not just to cancel your current insurance but to cancel the insurance you've had in the past."
I'm not sure exactly sure, Jim. Part of this is ignorance, and another aspect is the insurance and medical lobbies in this country are probably stronger than in any other nation in the world. Its a trillion dollar industry here.
ReplyDeleteYes, hitting working and professional people hard when they are already knocked down. Good points, Red.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, Cassandra, the main lobby in the hospital in my area looks like something out of the a Rajah's palace in an old technicolor movie. Ditto the one up the road in the next county.
ReplyDeleteI went to an optical center to have my eyes a few months back checked and the place was fully staffed and the waiting rooms practically opulent! Hospitals, medical offices and casinos are all brimming with great decor ;-)
Any health care system is going to have slippery players, and, yes, I know hospital closings are a big problem. But at least we can protest the government when it does something unjust; the only way to stop a company is to but up the majority of its stock.
BTW:I'm glad to see the British people and Media are sticking up for the NHS in the face of withering and often-false claims hurled at the UK by anti-reformists over here.
Has to be done. Amazing thing is that all the political parties have rallied to put up a strong defence of the NHS. Wonder what else it would take to get that sort of unanimity?
ReplyDeleteThis is a sad and damning indictment of the neglect the tax paying public receive from their government I think Doug. We are robbed to supply cut price weapons of mass destruction to Israel and squander trillions on the technology of genocide so some smug bastard gets rich on the back of it.
ReplyDeleteIf Britain and America cannot afford to keep up and improve the welfare of the nation it is because of the vast sums used to fight ridiculous wars forever, without any purpose or end...except to keep the arms industry booming and the terror unrelenting,
It is an obscenity and the poor woman in the video is but one face of the many people that are dispensed with everyday in the name of profit.
Nothing short of revolution in democracy will make any difference, this is murder by neglect. America must hold Obama to his word however hard he tries to lose the argument and create a clamour that cannot be ignored I think..
Yes, AA, one hears all the time from consevative circles how such-and-such a social program is "going bankrupt".
ReplyDeleteI notice these same people never say "the foreign war is bankrupt" or "the deficit is too high to allow for tax cuts tailored to the top tier of wealth holders." Never!
Agree Obama has to deliver something serious on this. This is his number one policty objective right now, and his Administration will be defined on how much courage is shown in standing up to the vacilllators and the liars and the hydra-headed Gucci-wearing minions of the medical lobby.
Beautifully put Doug...if I may make so bold as to say so?
ReplyDeleteThank you, AA. I would be remiss if I didn't give some credit to a former US Senator and Presidential Candidate, Bob Dole of Kansas. He once spoke of a corridor of the Congress outside the important Ways and Means Committee Room as "Gucci Gulch" for all the well-heeled tax lobbyists waiting to shoehorn their way inside. The reference has stuck, as it should.
ReplyDelete