Side note, this exact scenario is why OB malpractice insurance costs so much which has the effect of discouraging OB doctors in general and why there is a shortage of OB doctors in many places. That visual and its impact is strong enough to win almost any argument no matter the details. All the more powerful in this instances where the details were against the insurance company already.
You’ll need a more targeted sample size for “most people”, you’re probably not hanging out in hospital ICUs.
PSA: - Fill out a health proxy form naming someone you trust to make decisions when you are unable to, AND discuss the decisions you want with them ahead of time. Second, fill out the resuscitation form with your directions on how far doctors should go to try and save you.
Without either, the hospital will go to all heroic measures to try and prolong you life for even a few hours. Even with both, in the heat of the moment, as you’re crashing, when your proxy is asked if they should intubate you, possibly prolonging your life for only hours or days, possibly never being able to remove the tube, your proxy may request they try anyway simply because they’re not ready to lose you, and answering the question to stop trying is so hard, final, and could be second guessed forever.
This, this, THIS. It’s not just about your wishes, it’s a kindness to them, too. They aren’t having to make a decision at that point, just relay yours. Actually talking about it is different than just having it down on paper. It gives them a chance to think about it in advance.
It isn’t easy to talk about dying, but it’s something that we ought to do more often.
I personally use Christian (following the teachings of Christ) and X-ian [pronounced ex-ee-un] (mouthing the words at best and pissing on the concepts). This includes X-ian backers of the border wall and family separation, anti-welfare and anti-poor folk, and Trump supporters (seriously, Christ would have turned Trump’s tables the FUCK over way before now). Most churches I find to be X-ian as well…because while faith can be a beautiful thing, religion is often downright fugly.
I cannot “like” this enough. As a doc, I was “deputized” to make decisions for my sibs at my mom’s end-of-life events. She had been very clear early on what she did NOT want, so it was pretty easy (lying totally, it was not in any way easy and I still deal with my own mind going “boy, you killed your mom” at times.) But had she not been clear, it would have been much much worse. Be kind to your decision makers, whomever they may be and fill out and discuss the living will or whatever plan you may desire.
This is a really great point. Most of the emphasis on high costs tend to rightly implicate the insurance companies. But there has been a great concentration of hospitals and we all know what happens to prices when an industry becomes concentrated.
An excellent comparison, albeit with vastly lower stakes, as both are corporate oligopolies using captured bureaucracy to bilk the least powerful for exorbitantly artificially inflated costs in order to line the pockets of shareholders, which are in turn mostly other companies owned by the one percent.
Equally to the point, the hospitals’ customers are largely NOT its patients - its customers are the insurance companies, who are also highly concentrated. Doubles the effect on prices.
My first-born was birthed at a Dignity Health hospital. Ended up being a 4 day stay. Dignity billed Blue Cross $200,000 for the ordeal. Blue cross rejected the claim as “not medically necessary”.
A $200,000 bill looming over our heads put quite an ominous cloud over those early months. Adjusting to life with a child is challenging enough without the threat of imminent bankruptcy.
Fortunately, our OBGYN’s office fought the insurance company, and they eventually reached a settlement with the hospital, months later.
Ever since I received that $200k bill ten years ago, I’ve been a strong advocate for burning our whole healthcare system to the ground. The healthcare-industrial complex has singlehandedly inspired a whole generation of socialists.
this news hits home for me. i was a super preemie, just under 6 months in the 70s, and the insurance was a nightmare for my parents. The insurance tried to claim that i was a self aborted fetus and not pay even though i was an alive baby. That was the usa healthcare system in a nutshell up until obamacare. i’m glad to be here. spent the first few months in an incubator. the bottoms of both my feet are pretty much scars because they didn’t have O2 finger clips yet and had to keep close track of my blood oxygen, only way was to cut me every 2 hours and check the blood. i was very very fortunate for the time period to have even made it.
It is very much both. Frequently reenforcing each other. Why does the heath care cost so much? Because the consumer isn’t paying it, so they don’t shop around for price. Why don’t they shop around? Partly because the insurance pays it, and partly because the price structure is so opaque. Why is the price structure so opaque? Because doctors offices bill the same procedure different ways for different insurance companies. Why? Because some companies have strict limits on cost of materials, others on cost of doctors, others on nursing costs. All work out to around the same total limit, but if they bill $120 with one mix the insurance will only pay $75 and then they have to chase the patient around for something that “should be covered”. (I don’t blame the doctors here, they need to get paid so they can keep the doors open and treat people, paying of med school is also a goal of theirs, and maybe eventually living in a house and having a nice car and such)
That isn’t by any means an exhaustive list (emergency care is exceptionally expensive, but for various reasons in the USA many many people won’t have any effective normal coverage, so they are forced to wait until whatever it is is bad enough to end up at the ER where nobody can be denied care, even If they aren’t going to pay…so everything else gets to cost more for the ER care that people can’t afford to pay, and have been forced to use due to lack of non-ER coverage).
We have had this system for decades and every year all the players work really hard on finding a new way to get more money for themselves, and pay less to anyone else.
Did not Jesus say, in his 4th quarter epistle to the shareholders, that one can not only serve two masters; but leverage widespread operational synergies by doing so?
Sad proof that communism erodes knowledge of biblical truth…
I would not exist under US health care. It was a high-risk pregnancy for my mother with my older sister, let alone me. Then I was about 2 mos early (hospital records screw-up) and needed extra care, then tried to come down with dear god don’t let my infant get diseases before I was old enough to be vaccinated against them.
Socialized medicine meant my parents could afford the hospital stays and surgeries (planned C-section for both of us, hence why the records screw-up played a part) and doctor’s visits when the fussy baby wouldn’t calm down and was running a fever.
US healthcare kills people. You have deathpanels now: they’re called the insurance companies. People actively avoid needed care. It’s horrifying.
