Is health insurance that hard to get in the States? Is there any way to get treament without money?
You can get treatment in the states without health insurance at a public hospital. That is not to say that the healthcare that you set when you are not paying is any good. Also, if there is a big expense it is easy for the hospital to overlook that option for a less expensive (and more dangerous to the patient). Without insurance you will not get an organ transplant. That is reserved for those that can afford it.
Really, even with health insurance, healthcare it is not very good here. With kickbacks to doctors for prescribing certain drugs (the pharmaceutical companies give doctors money and vacations for prescribing their drugs, often new and unproven).
Add to that the insurance companies policies that deny valid claims in hopes that the member will pay it and denying pre-certification hoping that the patient will not have the proceedure.
Then you have the doctors. With a HMO, which many people have, your primary care physician is paid monthly for your care. They get paid if you never come in. They make MORE money if you never come in. If you do come in for routine items, they are paid little or nothing for your visit. This is probably the reason why whenever I call with a problem, I am given an appointment in a couple weeks. If you call because you have uncontrollable vomiting, they tell you that they can see you in a week (when you will either be well or dead), or you can go to the hospital emergency room (Where you will wait for a half a day and your doctor is not bothered.)
Add to that the insurance companies policies that even they cannot figure out. Take this example: You go to the hospital for an emergency surgery. Say it is a pregenancy miscarriage. You call and let your Primary care and OB/GYN physician know that you are going (so that the insurance will cover it). You have the surgery. Once you get home, you start getting bills: From the hospital, from the surgeon, from your doctor, from the Anastheologist (sp?). "These should all have been included in my insurance!" you say. Nope. The Anastheologist is not in our network. You owe them $1000 for the 15 minutes that they were in the room. "But how did I know that they were not in the network?". The answer is that you didn't and couldn't have known as you would not have net them until a few minutes before surgery. Yuo would not have had time to call your insurance company and even if you did, there would be no time and no way for you to get another Anastheoligist. You get who the surgeon and hospital give you.
....nd my family is one are the lucky ones with insurance. For all of this I pay about $3500 a year just to the insurance company and my company pays some more to subsidize me. All of this money paid to the insurance company and they seem to go out of their way to provide as little as possible and to make it as difficult as possible for me to get good healthcare.
I have not seen SICKO yet. I will see it when it comes out on DVD. On a side note, Michael Moore just received a subpoena from the US Govt and faces criminal and civil charges for traveling to Cuba. For a free country it is very odd that it is illegal to travel to some countries that the government does not care for. You have to get approval from our Government to travel there legally. They would certainly not grant it to someone that the Bush administration dislikes as much as Moore. They did grant it to the press corp for the Pope's visit there a few years back.
Sorry for the off topic post, but Black Swan asked!
Bill
