Sullivan's "View from your sickbed"

Post #312,334 by Another Scott 8/9/09 12:56:33 PM Reply	Sullivan's "View from your sickbed" Andrew Sullivan has been publishing readers' stories about their experiences with healthcare in the US. The latest installment: http://andrewsulliva...9/08/the-v-4.html :-/ I think everyone who thinks private insurance is more efficient than "government health care" should read this from someone who worked in health insurance claims: http://andrewsulliva...ur-sickbed-6.html All of them are here - http://www.theatlant...s=sickbed&x=0&y=0 Cheers, Scott.
Post #312,340 by Ashton 8/9/09 2:34:18 PM Reply	Today's SF Chron lead story delves into the asserted 98K/year 'deaths via medical mishap'. http://www.sfgate.co...09/MNN9191URO.DTL 98,000 Reasons Why: Should you ever be so unfortunate as to 'enter' a US hospital ... NEVER do so sans your personal Ombudsman, who scrutinizes charts, med lists, observes aides with hypos and double-checks their exact content AND QTY, etc. (And queries medicos -- if you cannot -- until satisfied that they have spent more than the usual 3 minutes assessing / before moving on to their next group project. Hmmm.. beats car crashes, most warz (when averaged) ... we're Sooo good at sports stats.
Post #312,341 by Another Scott 8/9/09 3:47:25 PM Reply	Not to mention all the non-fatal mistakes... I think I've mentioned these before - just a couple of examples I know about: 1) Friend's step father: Had some serious discomfort in his chest when breathing. Dr. had X-rays taken. Diagnosis - lung cancer. Rapidly-scheduled surgery that involved a 4-foot long incision that wrapped around his back, etc. Lots of pain, lots of pain meds, lots of recovery time. Undoubtedly, lot of expense for his insurance policy and/or Medicare. Pathology report on the stuff removed: scar tissue from old lung infections, not cancer. 2) Father in law temporarily in a nursing home for rehab after a brief hospitalization to install a trache tube to ease his breathing. After a day or so, he was nearly comatose. The nurses and aids talked about how great he was doing - "See, he can touch his face with a wash cloth!", as he sat in a wheel chair and did almost nothing. Turns out, they were crushing his time-released morphine pills and giving them to him with his other crushed medications. So rather than getting, say, 30 mg of morphine over 8 hours, he was getting it over a few minutes. And that was one of the better nursing homes around here... One often hears stories of surgery nearly being done on the wrong leg, though apparently operating rooms are getting better at using markers to make big X's and say "Other Leg!" and similar... I've also heard several stories from friends over the years who said that nurses had killed patients sharing their room by giving them the wrong meds, or the wrong dose. I'm sure its relatively common (as the SFC story points out). You're right that everyone who is hospitalized needs an individual advocate. It's too easy for mistakes to be made, too often with serious or deadly consequences. Cheers, Scott.
Post #312,342 by mhuber 8/9/09 4:45:28 PM Reply	That "Other Leg" marker thing is YOUR job, not the pro's. I'm wondering when it will be a profession to sit in a hospital and make sure they don't screw up. Probably about the time that "being screwed by your insurance company" insurance becomes available. I think there is a real market for both.
Post #312,344 by Ashton 8/9/09 7:01:14 PM Reply	Love that last! ... new CDO industry? The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H.L. Mencken
Post #312,352 by drook 8/9/09 10:05:48 PM Reply	There's already a method, don't need a whole new profession I read a story (probably linked from here) about a doc who made what amounts to a pre-flight checklist for docs and nurses to maintain. Every hospital that adopted them showed a dramatic decrease in infections, complications, and recovery time. But doctors keep fighting them, with the same bullshit excuses they used in the 1800s when they were told to wash their hands. (By the way, poor hand washing by doctors is still one of the top causes of hospital-borne infections.) -- Drew
Post #312,356 by static 8/9/09 10:56:36 PM Reply	Basic habits. It would be far too scandalous, but imagine if a hospital started only hiring doctors who had that automatic hygience trained into them since childhood. Or if medical schools started turning away applicants without that habit. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #312,366 by boxley 8/10/09 11:19:31 AM Reply	idle question, do you think a government tard is really gonna fix all of that? Government tart is probably going to be a laid off insurance tard who is hired because of their previous experience.
Post #312,368 by beepster 8/10/09 11:27:20 AM Reply	And these are simply anecdotal evidence of how horrible our system is...and the fact that all of seemingly unrelated stories are showing up everywhere all saying how evil our insurance industry is (in the face of being eliminated by the government..oh sorry...by being allowed to "compete with a public option") is all just coinkeedink. I want to know one thing, will Congress, Executive and all branches of fed government be required to move to the public option healthcare they are creating. If the answer is no, then you should simply ask "why". I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
Post #312,370 by jake123 8/10/09 11:29:37 AM Reply	I agree completely and fwiw, that's the situation extant in Canada.
Post #312,372 by Another Scott 8/10/09 11:37:11 AM Reply	Lookup FEHB. While things are still nebulous, I believe what Obama wants is something like the FEHB. http://www.opm.gov/I.../HEALTH/INDEX.ASP The Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program can help you and your family meet your health care needs. Federal employees, retirees and their survivors enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country. You can choose from among Consumer-Driven and High Deductible plans that offer catastrophic risk protection with higher deductibles, health savings/reimbursable accounts and lower premiums, or Fee-for-Service (FFS) plans, and their Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO), or Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO) if you live (or sometimes if you work) within the area serviced by the plan. OMG! It's the 7th Seal of the Apocalypse! Cheers, Scott.
Post #312,374 by boxley 8/10/09 11:41:20 AM Reply	then why doesnt obama get off his ass and trundle over to the congress and tell THEM what he wants. It appears that democrats are complaining that they dont KNOW what he wants an he needs to do that leadership thingy
Post #312,377 by Another Scott 8/10/09 12:11:03 PM Reply	He's been clear about what he wants. http://www.whitehous...sues/health_care/ HTH. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #312,381 by boxley 8/10/09 1:09:08 PM Reply	you better send that link to feinstein then http://patdollard.co...ering-with-video/ Other Democrats complain that by not providing enough clarity on where the health-care overhaul is headed, the White House has left them exposed politically as they face constituentsÂ scrutiny Â and rivalsÂ attacks Â during the August recess. ÂSpecificity is what is needed,Â said Sen. Dianne Feinstein. ÂWhatÂs most helpful now is: ÂThis will reduce costs, and here is precisely how.Â Â Asked if the White House had provided this specificity, the California Democrat said, ÂNo.Â oh, she said specifics, never mind :-)
Post #312,373 by boxley 8/10/09 11:39:47 AM Reply	and also amusing as I have related personal issues showing the true face of government run health care via the Indian Health Service that are shrugged off as anomalies that will not happen to white folk government health care :-)
Post #312,376 by Another Scott 8/10/09 12:09:54 PM Reply	The people pushing the paper don't write the rules. The problem is the system, not the people who collect the forms and forward them on to people up the chain. Congress and Obama are working on fixing the system. HTH. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #312,485 by dmcarls 8/13/09 3:26:02 PM Reply	The Atlantic checks in on this topic.... How American Health Care Killed My Father http://www.theatlant...00909/health-care
Post #312,487 by boxley 8/13/09 3:29:50 PM Reply	yeah, it surprises me that docs and others dont wash their hands properly. Sanitation in a lot of hospitals in canada are bad as well. The IHS unit in Nevada was really bad.
Post #312,488 by Andrew Grygus 8/13/09 3:59:06 PM Reply	My father was killed by do-gooders. The do-gooders had just published a big list of the survival rates from heart surgery at all the hospitals in the region - so people could make "informed decisions". The result was, nobody would take on a high risk heart surgery for fear it would affect their numbers on the next report.

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