Politics and Medicine

This has certainly been a colorful year for anyone who participates in the voting process, from those young enough to be observing & forming opinions to those who have been voting for decades.  Each candidate has made recommendations on how to improve the current healthcare system.  It is not my intent to use this forum to push one candidate over another, but to open discussion to the views of the three candidates running at the time of this writing.  Let’s start a sumary of plans from the Republican candidate, since that candidacy is finalized. . . Visit each candidate’s website (the hyperlink will send you directly to their page regarding their plan for any changes they would make as President regarding healthcare).  Offer your thoughts.  We vote on a candidate for many of their views generally.  What are your thoughts on each candidate’s plans specifically regarding healthcare? *** (See note at end of page)

Per John McCain’s website, he supports the following:

• Reform The Tax Code To Offer More Choices Beyond Employer-Based Health Insurance
• Make Insurance More Portable
• Encourage And Expand The Benefits Of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) For Families

Plans to Ensure Care for Higher Risk Patients:

• John McCain’s Plan Cares For The Traditionally Uninsurable-You may visit the website for further details, but it offers sketchy details on how he wants to accomplish this.
• Work With States To Establish A Guaranteed Access Plan
• Work With States To Establish A Guaranteed Access Plan

Lowering Healthcare Costs

• CHEAPER DRUGS: Lowering Drug Prices
• CHRONIC DISEASE: Providing Quality, Cheaper Care For Chronic Disease
• COORDINATED CARE: Promoting Coordinated Care
• GREATER ACCESS AND CONVENIENCE: Expanding Access To Health Care
• There is far more. . . I encourage you to visit his website for the complete plan he has laid out and his views on how to reform healthcare

Barak Obama’s Plan for Healthcare:

• Plan to Cover Uninsured Americans
• National Health Insurance Exchange
• Reducing Costs of Catastrophic Illnesses for Employers and Their Employees
• Helping Patients
• Ensuring Providers Deliver Quality Care
• Lowering Costs Through Investment in Electronic Health Information Technology Systems
• Lowering Costs by Increasing Competition in the Insurance and Drug Markets
• Advance the Biomedical Research Field
• Fight AIDS Worldwide
• Support Americans with Disabilities
• Again, the website continues in far greater detail than space makes reasonable to put here.

Hillary Clinton’s Plan for Healthcare:

American Health Choices Plan (PDF)

Health Care Costs Agenda

Health Care Quality Agenda

Long-Term Care Agenda

Long-Term Care Insurance Market

Plan to Fight Cancer

Plan to Fight Autism

HIV/AIDS

Agenda for Reproductive Health Care

Standing for Seniors (PDF)

Hillary’s Plan to Find a Cure for Breast Cancer

 

 

 

 *** (Each candidate’s page was laid out differently.  My goal was to bring out their major points & give you the resources to review each candidate more thoroughly.  It would be a book, not a page, to mention each candidate’s complete views on this topic.  The layout is not in any way intended to endorse any of the candidates.)

Is LOA designed to make you sicker or get well?

My whole experience with LOA has been one that I can honestly say I hope I never have to go through again.  As I have stated, I never imagined I would be gone such a long time.  I do know that I would never have made it without a family member to help me.

Everything has a purpose, but there really should be a better system.  Some of it is federal regulation, some is clearly company policy.  All of it is annoying to those who are sick and to the healthcare providers who do a lot of work & are not financially reimbursed for it.  You can say thank you, but some days it seems to go in one ear and out the other.

Mountains of paperwork, a specific number of days to fill it all out, employees who ‘don’t think it’s their job’ and could care less if I lose my job if they don’t fill it out on time.  Stress?  Stress is knowing that if it isn’t completed & returned on time, you just lost all those benefits.  I wonder if the parties involved would like to pay my hospital bills or provide a paycheck.  Through begging, pleading, and literally sitting outside in the lobby (not me), the paperwork was rushed to arrive at the final hour.  I am thinking that did not help with my initial physical healing, but we aren’t supposed to hold on to those things.  I think I am a little frustrated over that because of an appointment yesterday with a physician scratching their head, asking why this has been such a severe attack.  And he doesn’t know about the things going on internally.

I then wait to see if it has been approved.  They have an allotted number of days, and you are to be notified in a specific manner.  In fact, in two very specific manners.  One is through your local office.  They ‘forgot’.  Yes, that is the word that was used.  Forgot.  Then I would learn that everything I had signed up for the previous year as options to come out of my paycheck keep coming out.  Everything.  Because we had so much mandatory overtime & I had a ton of deductions, my paycheck was now 1/3 of what it was before. 

Until my STD was approved, I had to call in sick every day.  If I missed one day, it was over.  No job.  So every day that the medical office delayed turning in my paperwork, I had to get up at a very early hour to notify them of what they already knew ~ I wouldn’t be there that day.  My SO (to remain anonymous) was out of town or trying to keep the kitchen stocked with food that I could prepare myself during the day.  Pay bills, maintain all household responsibilities, take me anywhere I needed to go (I still haven’t driven anywhere yet).  It was suggested that he make the calls.  Yes, he needed one more thing to do.  Wait, no he didn’t.

I think I started resting about the 4th week.  Just in time for my first followup appointment.

No ordinary day

You think you know how a day is going to go.  I really don’t remember much of those early days.  I do remember being required to attend the doctor’s visit & not being well enough to drive.  In fact, I’m not sure if I was walking.  Doesn’t matter.  To me, I was being compliant & following through on my employer’s request, nothing more.  By now, I anticipated this being a 2-weeker.  I do recall being quite nauseous on the drive to the medical facility, and calling it being ’sea-sick’.  We discussed what was the likely scenario ahead of us.  Medication at home, rest, and we agreed back to work in 2 weeks. Very doable.  I could live with that.

That was not the end of the story.  I am not sure either of us is so great at assessing my medical condition.  He likes to deny things because it can become too painful, and I ~ well, I’m obviously ill.  No family nearby to see the obvious.  In fact, our family seems to be shrinking all the time.  I think that they are so used to the situation by now that it is old hat to them anyway.  This started out to be that way for me.  Until the appointment.

I soon learned I got to use up my annual deductible on another trip to the hospital.  Something was up because it was my longest stay ever.  We did funky tests of which the purpose for them were never explained to me.  I was perhaps too tired to care to ask at the time.  I still thought I would be back to work in no time.

Some therapy was scheduled, but it didn’t even begin for another week after my discharge.  Clearly I wasn’t thinking well, as I thought we should just dive right in.