The State Of US Healthcare

Since my double diagnosis of cancer I have been watching the crap being pulled on the US healthcare system.

This subject is an ever changing one thanks to the mindless decisions made by Donny and that pack of idiots our healthcare depends upon….idiots like Oz and RFK,Jr….neither is especially bright.

Since the ill advised policies of Donny and his GOP Lackeys the strain on hospitals has increased….

Months after congressional Republicans refused to extend enhanced subsidies for Americans who receive their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, hospitals across the US are seeing a surge in uninsured patients seeking emergency medical care.

According to a Thursday report in The New York Times, executives at large hospital systems have been raising alarms over “the unexpectedly sharp rise in uninsured patients and the costs associated with treating them.”

With many uninsured patients unable to pay their hospital bills, the Times noted, hospitals are seeing “lost revenues amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars across the country’s vast health systems.”

The Times linked this surge in uninsured patients directly to the Republican-controlled Congress allowing more generous subsidies for plans purchased through the ACA to lapse at the end of 2025. Enrollment in the program has fallen by about 3 million people since last year.

“What that tells me is that there are patients who are completely unable to pay,” Laura Kaiser, chief executive of Catholic nonprofit hospital group SSM Health, told the Times. “We’re really crushing people who are desperately trying to pay their bills.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/uninsured-emergency-room-surge

And believe it or not people voted for this asshole.

Then there are the policies for those who get Medicaid….

A federal judge on Thursday denied a request by more than two dozen Democratic states to halt a Trump administration policy announced last month that would require Medicaid recipients with terminal diseases to prove they are too sick to work in order to be exempt from new work requirements that go into effect this coming January.

While introducing over $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, last year’s massive GOP tax and budget bill also imposed new 80-hour-per-month work requirements that states must implement for Medicaid expansion recipients, who receive government-subsidized insurance coverage at or below 138% of the poverty line.

The law specified that those who are “medically frail or otherwise have special medical needs” are excluded from the work requirement, and specifically listed people with a “serious or complex medical condition.” But it remained unclear what exact conditions met these criteria.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced a new rule stating that even if a person receives a terminal diagnosis for a disease like cancer, HIV/AIDS, or Parkinson’s, that is still not enough for them to be exempt from the work requirements.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-medicaid-work-requirements-2677293170

These are just the latest incidents……there will be more before it ever gets better….if that is even possible.

I hope people in the UK are watching these turns for their NHS is under attack and this could be them as well….down the road.

Americans need to be thinking…..Medicare For All!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Story That Will Not Go Away!

Nadya Suleman apparently has bigger worries than taking care of her 14 children. Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw says she may have to prove she can handle the load, or else have hospital officials withhold her newborn octuplets.

McGraw said the 33-year-old unemployed mother called him Tuesday, distraught that Kaiser Permanente officials told her they were concerned about the babies living at her home in suburban Los Angeles.

“What she is telling me is that unless and until she has a better living arrangement, that they are not likely to release the children to her,” McGraw told the Los Angeles Times.

“If they feel there’s a risk to a baby, they contact Child Protective Services and Child Protective Services would make a determination as to whether or not there’s a reason for concern,” Bermudez said.

A call to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services was not returned Tuesday night.

Suleman has not responded to repeated interview requests from The Associated Press. Her phone has been disconnected and she no longer has a publicist.

So let me get this right….the people of Calif. will pay for the upkeep of the children…one way or the other….is that it?

The California Medical Board and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine are curious, too. Earlier this month they announced separately that they were investigating the Suleman case, stopping short of naming Michael Kamrava, the fertility doctor thought to have aided Suleman.

While much has been said about the social ramifications of the Suleman octuplets – such as issues about being a single mother, or the impact on the welfare system – these medical organizations need to investigate the case as they would any malpractice suit: Did the doctor deliberately put eight children at risk for serious medical conditions?

A study published in JAMA in 2005 followed over 200 ELBW babies until age 8 and found 14 percent to have cerebral palsy; 21 percent to have asthma; 10 percent to have vision worse than 20/200; nearly 40 percent to have an IQ lower than 85, which approaches a mental deficiency; and nearly 50 percent with poor motor skills.

Similarly, a study in Pediatrics in 2000 found that more than 50 percent of VLBW babies and up to 70 percent ELBW babies need special assistance at school.

Beyond all that…why has no one asked who paid for the comestic work she has done to look like Jolie? Please someone make this story go away!……………………….

Yes Irene, There Is More

The mother of octuplets was implanted with those embryos at a Beverly Hills fertility clinic run by a well-known — and controversial — specialist who pioneered a method of implantation. Dr. Michael Kamrava’s name emerged Monday as a result of an interview aired Monday on NBC with Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight babies Jan. 26.

Over the past two weeks, the identity of Suleman’s fertility doctor has been a source of great mystery because of questions over the ethics of implanting numerous embryos in a woman who already had six children.

In the NBC interview, Suleman did not identify her doctor by name, but said that she went to the West Coast IVF Clinic in Beverly Hills — of which Kamrava is director — and that all 14 of her children were conceived with help from the same doctor. In 2006, Los Angeles TV station KTLA ran a story on infertility that showed Kamrava treating Suleman and discussing embryo implantation.

Kamrava graduated from the University of Illinois and went to medical school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, according to state records and his Web site.

Some fertility specialists said Kamrava is a controversial figure in the field.

An in-vitro procedure typically costs between $8,000 and $15,000. Asked on NBC how she was able to afford the treatments, Suleman said she had saved money and used some of the more than $165,000 in disability payments she received after being injured in a 1999 riot at a state mental hospital where she worked.

She also told NBC that she does not intend to go on welfare, though her publicist confirmed Monday that Suleman already receives food stamps and child disability payments to help feed and care for her six other children.

Suleman’s publicist Mike Furtney said she receives $490 a month in food stamps. Furtney said Suleman did not want to disclose the nature of her children’s disabilities or the nature of those payments.

There will more to this story to come, of that I am sure. A PUBLICIST? Why does she need the PR? I smell a book and/or a made for tv movie.