ER Wait, Illegal Aliens, and Units

As an older person, going to an ER room in Northern Virginia (NoVA) is an exercise in costly futility unless you are on death’s door or are prepared to wait for endless hours while younger people are being treated for colds, high fever, bleeding fingers and toes, and other accidents which occur in the exercise of our daily human lives.

Few Americans know or care that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 or Obamacare had labeled those over a certain age as “units.” If patients are young, they probably think themselves immortal - they would never get old, therefore such “unit” labeling does not apply to them. The stark realization hits you like a ton of bricks - you have become an older “unit” that can be ignored because government formulas deemed your utility to society too close to zero.

Most hospitals in northern Virginia post on electronic boards the number of minutes a patient must wait before they are triaged and/or seen in an ER. That may appear comforting and caring about one’s health and time until you actually set foot in the ER and reality replaces clever and deceptive advertising.

I had to go to our local NoVA ER this week. After the initial data and insurance screening, triage, and waiting for three hours to be placed in a room and to be seen, I decided to leave.

The waiting room, triaged by two people speaking English with heavy accents, kept getting more crowded with illegal aliens who did not speak English and required a translator in their respective dialects. Over and over I heard the question, “Do you speak English,” and calls made over the loudspeaker to a phone translator or to a hospital employee who spoke that language. It was a veritable tower of Babel.

I felt alone and lost in a sea of people with sick children who could have been seen quickly and much cheaper by a local Emergicare doctor, while my chest was hurting like hell and needed immediate attention.

It is sad that, after paying half of my income in taxes and being forced to purchase three medical insurance premiums, I cannot get medical care in my own country. Illegals flood the emergency rooms in northern Virginia. As human beings, they have a right to be treated too but must I pay for them and must my medical care become secondary and tertiary to their needs?

Thirty years ago there were no Emergicare facilities where we lived and ER wait was extensive in the small southern town. I had to wait once eight hours when my child had 104.5 F fever before we could see a doctor. In that case it was because of the shortage of doctors - nobody wanted to practice medicine in a small town.

Locals had to travel 100 miles or more to the nearest larger town in order to seek medical care.  People were really nice in the local ER then but my daughter could have had a seizure. I gave her liquid Motrin but the fever was not coming down. She needed an antibiotic shot right away. She eventually got it but I am saddened to this day when I think about the length of our wait and what could have happened in that time.

Going to an ER was a big deal back then as charges were huge and people actually had to pay them immediately or over time. Today Americans and illegals flock to ERs for convenience. They use emergency rooms as their GP doctor because they have no idea how much it cost to use emergency services, they don’t care, and someone else is paying for their visit.

While we pay medical bills of illegals from Mexico and Central America, consider the situation when an elderly American residing in Mexico, was taken to a private hospital in Guadalajara recently by her American son. Following a fall and arrival at the hospital, within 30 minutes, the only American patient got a CT scan, two X-rays, blood tests, and specialist doctors to read the results. The hospital did not accept Medicare Part A insurance. The admission fee alone was 90,000 pesos ($4,500). Because the test readings were within normal range, the son asked to have the IV removed and she was discharged. The IV removal took three hours. The son had to leave his passport "hostage" with the promise to pay on Monday when the banks opened. The actual medical bill was 12,200 pesos ($610).

According to the Associated Press, starting on January 1, 2019, “Medicare will require hospitals to post their standard prices online and make electronic records more readily available for patients.”

“Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the new requirement for online prices reflects the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to encourage patients to become better-educated decision makers in their own care.” https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/medicare-will-require-hospitals-to-post-all-prices-online?fbclid=IwAR0ZhFVXxkyuRf64csFSMQV4x29X39xOJX0RFPjjqOWnSDeuapfe_JwQgkA

Americans should educate themselves before heading to the nearest ER, but what about all the illegal aliens who don’t speak English and who flood emergency rooms because they know medical care is free and is paid for by American taxpayers?

 

Obamacare Socialized Medicine Rationing and the Elderly

Healthcare is not a right, it is a service provided by doctors and nurses who went to school to learn how to care for a sick human being. And they expect to be compensated for their services. Surely you would not expect your mechanic who learned how to fix your car, repair it for free, because it is your right to have a running vehicle.

Health insurance is not a right either, it is also a service. Can you control what an insurance company does and what pricing systems they use? Can you control what government does now that they are in charge of your socialized health insurance and healthcare, including the 15-member death panel?

We know the Senate does not care about Americans’ health insurance premiums and the quality of their healthcare. If they did, they would not have passed without reading and then failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), socialized medicine under government control. Passed by Democrats in the dead of night, and deemed by the Supreme Court a tax, ACA became a burden for Americans who were mostly satisfied with their previous premiums and their healthcare delivery. Sure, there were improvements necessary but not an entire overhaul worth trillions.

What good is having a shiny insurance card that says you are entitled to Obamacare but that care is denied to you when doctors are not taking your insurance, the quality of care is very poor, procedures are denied due to rationing and age, and your deductibles shot through the roof?

Like most Americans, who saw their health insurance premiums skyrocket and their care worsen since 2010, I am confused why politicians are forcing this monstrosity called Obamacare on us. Congressmen have exempted themselves from Obamacare and are protected by their own private plans but the rest of us will eventually have to suffer under the socialized medicine of the type that sentenced baby Gard to death in the U.K.

Seniors are already treated like "units" in hospitals. My mom was recently the victim of Obamacare in one of the alleged best hospitals in Northern Virginia. She was kept solely on IV fluids for three days, even though she is skin and bones, so that she would not throw up and force doctors to give her the upper GI and endoscopy tests she needed. Instead, they treated her for a bladder infection which was not the reason why she had been brought to the ER - she was vomiting blood and had stroke level BP.  She was crying for solid food!

Her doctor explained to me that they could not do the upper GI and endoscopy because the radiology group located in the hospital gave priority to outpatients, unless an inpatient was currently bleeding and/or vomiting. She vomited but they ignored her. Was it because she is 85 years old and an Obamacare "unit" and not worth spending the money on, or was it because she is a legal immigrant?

She was starved for three days and her important medicines for conditions like blood pressure and dementia were not administered, causing a serious relapse in her physical and mental condition. This is medical abuse when you tell a patient that comes into the ER with serious symptoms that they cannot have procedures except on an outpatient basis at a later date and withhold important meds that they are currently on.

No amount of protests, complaints, or inquiries on my part made a difference. This is what happens under socialized medicine when bureaucrats who know best make life and death decisions over us and our loved ones.

Mom lived under the boot of communism and escaped to this country in her late forties. The communists stripped her of everything she had ever earned, owned, and saved, including her pension after 30 years of work. She was not even given my dad’s pension. She lived here for over three decades under relative freedom. It is sad that now, in her twilight years, she is made to suffer again and will die under the neglect of socialized medicine that allocates funds to more productive individuals. Mom was productive too in her younger years.

Little Charlie Gard lost his battle with socialized medicine rationing in the U.K. Those who are unable to protect themselves, children and the elderly, are the first victims of socialized and rationed medical care because they cannot defend themselves. The way we treat seniors, the weak, and the most vulnerable speaks volumes of our lack of civilization and compassion. We should protect wildlife and our habitat but it seems that we care more for minnows and polar bears than we do human beings.

Mom lost five pounds she could not afford to lose while in hospital care for three days. They were more worried that she might fall than her actual survival. She was not fed anything for three days except water and IV antibiotics. She was lucky to have gotten out with her life.

It is bad enough that some elderly are physically abused in nursing homes and/or neglected by underpaid and understaffed medical personnel; they must now suffer the indignity of denied hospital medical care in the rationing environment of Medicare and Medicaid that were shortchanged in order to help fund Obamacare, and by the scarcity of doctors and nurses created by Obamacare.

So much for the unaffordable Affordable Care Act that provides substandard medical care and offers expensive insurance premiums to Americans who are now faced with huge deductibles each year, possible loss of insurance, and fines by the IRS for non-compliance.

Grants Because the Economy Isn't Doing So Well

The economy is so rosy, the statistics tell us, we are at what economists call full employment. “Full employment is a situation in which everyone who is willing and able to work can find a job. At full employment, the measured unemployment rate is still positive.” Economists have argued for years that the full employment number was somewhere “near 5 percent unemployment.”

President John F. Kennedy tried to commit the federal government to a target rate of 4 percent unemployment but it was rejected as being too unrealistic and overly ambitious.

To prevent another Great Depression, an unemployment insurance system was put in place after 1933 as a temporary cushion. Through this insurance which gives money to those who become unemployed, unemployment insurance props up aggregate demand during recessions.

Unfortunately, unemployment insurance replaces about one half of the lost income of the unemployed persons who are insured. Economists agree that “fewer than half of the unemployed actually collect benefits” and the lost output that could have been produced had these people been working cannot be replaced.

The system of payroll taxes and unemployment benefits helps spread the cost of unemployment over the entire population, or so it was thought. But it does not eliminate the basic economic cost nor does it prevent the shrinking working population from shouldering an unfair burden of support resulting from bad economic policies that have failed to create jobs and increase aggregate demand.

When Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is below its potential, and it is under this regime, unemployment is above “full employment.” This begs the question then, is the reported unemployment of 5.5 percent accurate?  The answer is no because discouraged workers are no longer counted as if they had disappeared, and many unemployed have shifted from the ranks of the unemployed to the ranks of the disabled and of those on welfare.

A discouraged worker is an unemployed person who has given up looking for work and is therefore no longer counted as part of the labor force. Currently, it is hard to pin down the number of abled-bodied individuals that comprise the American labor force given the fact that we have so many illegal aliens in this country that are gainfully employed but work under the radar of statistics. We do know that we have the lowest labor force participation (62.7%) since the late 70s.

The World Bank lists the 2013 U.S. labor force as 158,959,242 persons. “Total labor force comprises people ages 15 and older who meet the International Labor Organization definition of the economically active population. … The labor force includes the armed forces, the unemployed, and first-time job-seekers, but excludes homemakers and other unpaid caregivers and workers in the informal sector.”

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN

 

In 2013, Brad Plumer told us that the shrinking labor force is caused by:  “1) The Ageing of America;  2) The bad economy is keeping workers in school and out of the labor force; 3) More workers are going on disability insurance.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/08/the-u-s-labor-force-is-still-shrinking-rapidly-heres-why/

The victims of high unemployment or forced partial employment due to Obamacare are paying a high financial and psychological price, costs that are borne quite unevenly by different groups of the population.

Instead of addressing the sluggish economy, the lack of job creation, the job-killing Obamacare, the job-killing EPA draconian regulations, the regime is offering grants to the unemployed, the disabled, and discouraged, and the generational welfare recipients.

On April 6, 2015, under the heading,” U.S. Government wants to help you,” Resource Depot sent out an email that said, “Did you hear the news? The U.S. economy isn’t getting better anytime soon. Thankfully, benefits may be available if you qualify for them.” (See if you qualify) “You may be eligible for a government grant. Many Americans never requested their piece of the $787 billion Recovery Stimulus. If you believe you may be entitled to some of these fund(s), please review your options.” (Click here to review your options)

If you are unemployed, discouraged, partially employed, or on welfare, do not worry, there are now grants to assure that you get your undeserved, unearned piece of the pie bought and paid for by someone else who does not mind supporting you financially – it’s the socialist way of spreading the wealth, take from the productive and give generously to the unproductive.

While we keep printing, spending, and giving away billions of dollars like there is no tomorrow, can anybody mathematically comprehend what $18 trillion of national debt means? Does anyone even care anymore?

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

Death Panels and the Progressive War on Menopausal Women

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that ten years after Obamacare will be fully implemented, more than 30 million Americans will still be without health insurance. Not to worry, there won’t be enough doctors to deliver proper care or much care at all if you do have insurance. And the dreaded Death Panel that Sarah Palin was disparaged over will also be in full operation.

The Independent Panel Advisory Board (IPAB) is Obamacare’s 15-member board of unelected, unaccountable to the public bureaucrats whose function is to make cuts in order to keep Medicare spending within certain parameters. These limits, starting in 2018, will consist of the rate of economic growth per capita plus one percentage point.

Since economic growth has been very sluggish due to a relatively deep recession, and the size of the economy has been shrinking, with higher unemployment and more discouraged workers than actually reported, Medicare spending will likely be lower, denying patients their much needed care. Additionally, Medicare is being stripped of $719 billion over a ten-year period in order to fund Obamacare.

These faceless omnipotent IPAB bureaucrats appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate will have unaccountable reign over your health. If your medical care or tests are denied, nobody will know if it is because there is no effective treatment for your illness or because one of those 15 people have decided that your life is not worth saving.

Ferrara wrote that “Obamacare requires IPAB to produce proposals to slow the growth in national health expenditures and non-federal health care programs. He continued, “This is a clear mandate to reduce both government and private sector health care spending.” If medical spending is limited even in the private sector, that is a deliberate form of health care rationing. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/how_the_obamacare_death_panel_defies_the_constitution.html

Doctors will be overridden in their medical decisions by people with no medical training and patients may or may not get their needed tests or operations. Whether doctors will be at peace or in agreement with violating their Hippocratic Oath remains to be seen.

Many doctors will have been driven out of business by the low reimbursement rates from Medicaid and Medicare, will have retired, or will have switched to a different field entirely. Hospitals will also have been driven out of business by the massive debt amassed from servicing non-paying illegal aliens, impossible Obamacare mandates, and by low reimbursement rates from Medicare/Medicaid. Many private insurers will have been bankrupted by the financial expenditures to satisfy the health services mandates of Obamacare.

How many people will then pursue arduous medical school training, invest in human capital, invest in new developments in health care, new drugs, and new life-saving procedures if the return on investment is so low and medical care becomes severely rationed? As it is, there is a shortage of qualified medical personnel, but an augmented supply of millions of patients who are demanding care. What good is it if you have health insurance but cannot find a doctor who will accept you as a new patient, accept your insurance, or who is qualified to treat you?

Many Americans have been receiving letters informing them that doctors they’ve been using for years are no longer in the Obamacare approved exchanges and they must find new doctors. Other Americans enrolled in exchanges have had their plans switched two to three times due to the failure of the non-profit insurers to stay afloat in the face of an onslaught of claims eating away at their revenues and reserves, even with billions in federal grant money. Twenty-five of the 26 non-profit co-ops operating under Obamacare have registered losses so far.

If you are unable to receive the same timely and quality medical care that Americans have been accustomed to, if you are told that you can no longer buy the medicines or tests you need, receive proper cancer treatment to save your life, or see the doctors you’ve known for years and trusted, it is Obamacare mandates and its faceless agents reshaping how long you can live and what quality of life you are going to have.

As Dr. Donna Hurlock, a Board Certified Gynecologist, said, there is a “Medicare war against menopausal women” with its new “anti-estrogen policy that it’s hurting menopausal women.” This new policy is based on a 2002 National Institutes of Health study, Women’s Health Initiative, that claimed that estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) “poses excessive risks to menopausal women.” https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/whi/estro_pro.htm

Dr. Hurlock said that eighty years of estrogen use support the opposite conclusion that women on ERT live longer and better functional lives than women that elect not to replace hormones. Post-menopausal women that do replace their hormones “end up consuming fewer medicines than their peers because they don’t develop the many health problems that result from estrogen deficiency, such as sleep problems, high cholesterol, bone loss, memory issues, dizziness, vaginal dryness, etc.” http://fairfaxfreecitizen.com/2015/02/23/medicares-war-against-menopausal-women/?utm_source=Fairfax+Free+Citizen+Digest&utm_campaign=d97702cff7-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_69cf25d58d-d97702cff7-201781813

Medicare’s new policy as of January 1, 2015 is to deny payment for ERT and to substitute hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with “alternative” drugs such as anti-depressants, neurologic drugs, bone density drugs, and vaginal estrogen creams. Each of these “alternative” drugs have a long list of side-effects, potentially more dangerous and more expensive than hormone replacement therapy (HRT), decreasing the woman’s quality of life. To make matters worse, any HRT that includes testosterone has now been labeled a controlled substance and pharmacists must handle it accordingly. Such prescriptions expire every six months, necessitating repeat visits to the doctor.

Dr. Hurlock explained that many insurers are no longer “covering” her patients’ payments for HRT because “a group of ‘experts’ has decided that HRT becomes dangerous as soon as a woman celebrates her 65^th birthday, despite the plentiful literature to the contrary.” In her opinion, these experts are “clearly not making recommendations in the best interest of the patients based on the entire HRT literature.”

When the individuals, who wrote, publicized, lied about, voted on, and passed Obamacare as a tax, will be long gone from public life and forgotten, millions of Americans are going to suffer needlessly and potentially experience a shorter lifespan.

Liberals have created a faux “war on women.” There is a war, but it is a “war on your health,” a “war on middle aged women,” and a “war on the elderly,” all having a common denominator, rationing of care in order to reduce Medicare spending and to stretch the same health dollars to millions more, some of whom have broken into our country illegally. It is a war promoted by the progressive agenda that wants to fundamentally transform our country. They have succeeded beyond anybody’s dreams, with little resistance.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015