Saturday, nine days after I was dismissed from the hospital, I got a letter from BC/BS insurance, denying coverage for my last two days in the hospital. The denial letter got to me before the bills, which still have not arrived.
I hear so many people complaining about Obamacare. But, I challenge those nay-sayers to tell me how the present system is better than some sort of national health care would be! An insurance company is trying to make a decision AFTER I was dismissed that contradicts my surgeon's decision. The really stupid thing about this is that my surgery was extremely rare, so some clerk at BC/BS cannot possibly have known what care I needed.
By the way, on the day the insurance company said I should have been dismissed, I had just been advanced from NPO to a liquid diet.
The surgeon's office told me not to worry. The denial was based on exploratory surgery, not the surgery I actually ended up having. The insurance companies always start out this way, she said. I'm not even two weeks out of the hospital, and I have to put up with such nonsense! They obviously don't care about my blood pressure!
It's some clerk making medical decisions and forcing my doctor to defend his decision. I know all about how the present system, both through my own experience and through experience with elderly parents. The Obamacare regulations the nay-sayers are so concerned about already exist, to some degree, in the minds and back rooms of insurance company workers and call centers. Obamacare did not invent those. Insurance companies did.
Another complaint I hear often is that people will have to change their doctors. Well, I, too, will have to change doctors, but it wasn't Obamacare that brought that change. It was the insurance company. They dropped my doctor, along with many others and Barnes Hospital (nationally recognized hospital in St. Louis), as preferred providers. Why? Because they "over-utilize." In both of my health care crises, one more test would have diagnosed the problems. I would have been spared a worsening heart condition maybe ten years ago. For decades, I have been exposed to the possibility of a "catastrophic" event and have suffered many painful bouts, because my abdominal condition was undiagnosed. One.more.test--in both instances.
So, health care is still a mess. It took over 70 years to gain the degree of concensus we now have. I say, "Hang on. Refine it. Give it a chance." It's the first chance we have ever had!
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