No Surgery For Fat People
As Dot can attest, this sort of thing has been going on here for 20 plus years, with insurance companies. Somebody has to do something to control cost increases. We had to be careful what we wrote in the patient’s chart because of the insurance reviewer.
Posted by Oink
11/24/2005 at 09:57 AM
As I recall, the lowest priority on the medical treatment list was a liver transplant for an alcoholic that continued to drink.
Priorities and limited resources—always that. My problem with AIDS lobbying is not AIDS, but resources diverted from boring kidney disease and other similar ailments.
Posted by Oink
11/24/2005 at 11:50 AM
Oink: with the unerring accuracy of a one-eyed man drunk at the local pub playing darts, you have missed the point entirely. However, OCM has found it for you in #4. You should thank him for improving your accuracy.
In America, it’s us against insurance companies. Insurance companies can set rules which can be challenged in court, insurance companies can be sued if they refuse treatment, insurance companies can be avoided by shopping around.
In Britain, the government makes the rules and breaking the rules can land you in prison, plus you can’t sue the government.
It’s all bout who makes the rules ... insurance companies who compete in a free market -or- government bureaucrats who can arbitrarily decide that a BMI of 30 is the cutoff point.
Plus, as you say, insurance reports can be fudged. Not so with the govermnent handling healthcare. If caught, you can always tell the insurance companies it was an honest mistake. Have you ever tried that excuse with the IRS?
My
before 
for the day! Happy Thanksgiving!
Pearls before BMEWS. The advantage with big insurance is that you get to choose your company—well.. certainly more than you choose your bureaucrat. I must start being less subtle when dispensing my insights.
Government is sometimes easy to fool. (DON"T try it with the IRS) At the VA hospital I would fill out asinine report forms with absurd data— my occupation ‘catamite’, my commute to work 400 miles, etc. Never got questioned. Never did it with patient care info!
Posted by Oink
11/24/2005 at 01:01 PM
Hold on a moment. I am under the impression that you cannot sue your health insurance in this country for withholding treatment. Has something changed?
Oink I agree with you re the liver transplant. The former soccer “superstar” and super drunk George Best is still hanging on to life as I type. He had a liver transplant in 2002 (privately) If he was just joe public he would (quite rightly in my view) would have been put on a long waiting list. He went back to drinking and is now at death’s door. I am opposed to socialised medicine in most respects, but it sickens me that this waster has used up a perfectly good liver that someone genuinely in need could have benefitted from.
Skipper not to disagree with you (I don’t want to incur the wrath!) but people routinely challenge the government or more correctly the local health authority on medical care. Most recently they have overturned decisions by doctors who refused to prescribe expensive treatment for breast cancer to patients in the early stages. So it does happen. The point as you rightly make is that when you socialise medicine there is only so much cash to go round and at some point there has to be a cut off.
The thing with transplants is finding a match, not just the status of the patient. The medical staff is always on the lookout in behalf of “their” patients, not the vague “general welfare” of all patients.
This is a good aspect of human nature. When you find a person injured on the road you do not think, “I’ll check further down the road—maybe someone needs my help even more than him.”
Posted by Oink
11/25/2005 at 11:15 AM
Stinkerr is correct.
Under ERISA you can’t sue your employer-based health insurance plan if they have 20 or more full time employees.
Get employer-based health insurance and have no legal rights.
Of course with individual health insurance you have a contract and the right to sue. All my clients could sue yet we have never had one customer complaint on the HSA Qualifying coverage since 1997. Not one client has ever been terminated because of some relationship to an employer either.
Bill Clinton is jumping on the FAT people bandwagon. This should be a fun couple of years ahead. Bill Clinton is a bozo.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-05-03-clinton_x.htm
Posted by Z Woof
11/28/2005 at 05:06 PM
11/25/2005 at 05:45 AM
