Xeni passionately credits the ACA in helping her survive cancer

boing
44

Reminder to Get Probed. Maybe before you are 50 if you are in a risk group.

Even Low Premium High Deductible plans will pay for a colonoscopy. I know this for a fact; all I paid for out of pocket was the over-the-counter colon-blow meds and the van ride back home.

Addendum: Two co-workers & I got our probes a month or so apart, from the same doc. One guy turned out to have rectal cancer. Six months of surgeries, chemo, and radiation and various indignities, but he’s alive and functioning normally.

10 Likes
45

Oh, there is plenty of wiggle room left in the first question: There is no precise definition of a “friend,” after all, or of the word “wealthy” either.

His implication is that health care should be paid for out of pocket, or distributed by the whims of private charity, regardless of Xeni’s specific situation.

Depending on how much our trollish friend happens to know about Boing Boing, it might be a personal dig at the OP as well, suggesting that he should have mortgaged his house (or whatever) to pay Xeni’s medical bills.

9 Likes
46

11 Likes
47

It’s fractal!

No, wait. Farcical.

4 Likes
48

Good on Xeni!

If it wasn’t for the ACA, I wouldn’t have insurance right now. It’s not perfect, but damn it, it’s SOMETHING for those of us who have no other reasonable options.

15 Likes
49

This topic is temporarily closed due to a large number of community flags.

51

Lets please stay on topic and avoid personal attacks. Thank you.

4 Likes
52

Amazing appearance @xeni! Thanks for being an advocate for affordable healthcare in America!

19 Likes
53

Thank you so much for that, Xeni. Just . . .

Oh, and also . . .

14 Likes
54

Me too, probably. I’m a freelancer with type 1 diabetes.

I am a sad trombone.

9 Likes
55

Leaving aside the scare quotes, this is inaccurate. The new Medicaid enrollees are only eligible under the Medicaid expansion, which is part of the ACA. Because of a court ruling, states were able to reject the expansion, so people in those states are not eligible. Note - the expansion was partially paid for by reducing the payment to hospitals for uninsured patients (since they were now covered, they didn’t need it.) States that rejected the expansion screwed their hospitals and urgent care facilities.

9 Likes
56

For real. A walking talking example of taking what happens to you and turning it into what you did about it.

11 Likes
57

Yep.
So happy my state, despite being led by a Republican governor, chose to expand Medicaid. Otherwise, I’d be one of the dead ones. It’s not perfect*, but it’s actually a better health care plan than most I had when I was working and paying for it through employers or the union.

*Perfect would be covering several hundred dollars in meds that currently aren’t covered and are necessary for me to stay vertical.

10 Likes
58

There are (many, many) times I’m glad I’m Canadian. If I had to deal with my own cancer in the USA, even with insurance, I’d probably be out-of-pocket enough to be on the street - I’m not wealthy. Good on Xeni for fighting the good fight.

17 Likes
59

Hear, hear. Imagine the money and complexities we could save by getting rid of all the redundancies, and bonuses, and executives, and actuaries, and management, and red tape, and fighting between insurance companies and care providers, and designing new and terrific ways to screw customers, and rewriting policies every year, and . . . . .

11 Likes
60

…and… and… it works quite a bit better than what you’ve got.

4 Likes
61

Make the age limit minus 9 months and you might get conservative Christians on board with your nutty scheme! :wink:

4 Likes
62

Do you mind if I quote you the next time one of my relatives tells me the Affordable Care Act is exactly like the Canadian healthcare system and that all Canadians hate their healthcare system because a Canadian they know who spends six months of every year in Florida allegedly said so?

Obviously it’s both unnecessary and pointless to try refuting any of that but I figure if they can quote a random Canadian so can I.

8 Likes
63

I have no problem with that.

Tell them that I have prostate cancer, that I have had an iodine CT and technetium bone scan to check for metastasis (none, thankfully), I have been through 38 sessions of radiation therapy, I am getting Zoladex shots every three months, and I will be undergoing a bone density scan shortly (because of the hormone shots).

This is in addition to catheter changes, a urologist visit to see if the catheter is still necessary (will be referred for a dynamic bladder test and possibly some mild prostate surgery to get rid of the need for one - the scope showed a fairly good situation). There have been regular visits to the oncologist as well.

My best guess is that, with a fairly normal plan for your country, between deductibles and co-pay, I would be out at very least USD 20,000 by now. Note that I derived that estimate from descriptions of deductibles and co-pay of people on this board, and the costs from your Medicare system’s payouts for radiation therapy. Given that Medicare has clout with regards to medical pricing, i.e., they are a large enough customer to circumvent a lot of the gouging, that’s probably a conservative estimate.

My actual costs have been time and bus fare.

Note also that we may be slower for elective surgery and the like, but the time it took from a positive PSA test to treatment in my case was a couple of months (with the biopsy and scans in between). I don’t think it gets much faster in your country.

And then too, pre-existing conditions don’t matter here.

We’ve been doing this for 50 years. We are, in the main, a healthier, longer-lived people than Americans. I hate to say it, but your people have been fed a steady diet of bullshit when it comes to healthcare.

Edit: Oh, and there’s nothing private about our insurance. We pay a specific medicare premium with our taxes that is geared to income, with the maximum being CAD 900 per annum. One is, of course, free to buy supplementary insurance on the open market…

14 Likes