Can't Afford to Wait for healthcare reform
I was just viewing the MoveOn video about healthcare reform the other day. http://pol.moveon.org/healthcare_cantwait/
Set to some music by REM, it had snapshots of real individuals who have written their healthcare woes on some posterboards, giving a face to, and describing some of the insurance problems folks are facing today.
I also just recently read an article in the NYTimes, which is personally relevant to me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/health/policy/14kidney.html
My mother had a kidney transplant... mmm... about 6-7ish years ago, I want to say. We don't talk much in our family about my parents' expenses, like the mortgage cost, or the medical bills, etc. Well, a little about the medical bills, like how much an individual prescription costs when someone picks something up, perhaps. I've thankfully mostly been in good health, so usually I don't pay much besides the copay ($10-20 or so). Except my glasses. Ugh. I didn't realize how nice my Kaiser optical insurance was, nor how bad my eyes actually are, until I got my own job. Even with insurance, they're like $300, which is not that bad compared to some other things, I suppose. A quick side story:
My eyesight's pretty bad. A lot of people think their vision is bad, because they feel like they can't really see without their corrective lenses, or because they immediately see such a difference when they are wearing them. But usually it's not as bad as they think. I've always known I was pretty nearsighted... I've had glasses since I was 5, and whenever you meet someone else with glasses, you often switch and compare. Or even people without glasses want to try them on. and everyone had always commented that my glasses are strong enough to make them dizzy ^^; Anyway, I'm up to like -8 diopters now. and then there's this other number about your astigmatism. And it was only like -1.5 or -2 or something. So compared to 8, I didn't think that was that bad. But clearly that was false ^^;
Anyway, the NYTimes article talks about how it's pretty ridiculous that Medicare will pay for dialysis, at about $9000 a month. They'll pay for a kidney transplant ~$100k+. Then if you're under 65, they'll pay for 3 years of anti-rejection drugs ($1-3k per month). (If you're over 65, they'll continue to pay. I guess chornic kidney failure is one of the exceptions to the 65 year old requirement for Medicare - if you're in end stage renal disease, they'll cover you regardless of your age). Why invest all this money in a kidney transplant and then not continue to pay for the medications a person will need for the rest of their life to maintain that investment? I feel the situation in the article is particularly horrible because this woman had living donors... And she's on round 2 of this cycle now=(
The wait time for organs is long. My mom was on the waitlist for 5 years, and I think she was pretty lucky that it wasn't longer. A lot of people die before they even get to the top of the waitlist. The change when she got her kidney was drastic. It was a cadaver kidney, from a otherwise healthy 30-something year old. So it will likely last her quite a while. Her energy levels are way up. When you're chronically sick, you sort of get used to the changes. And with renal failure, it creeps up on you slowly, apparently. They never found the cause of my mom's kidney failure, but although it was diagnosed sometime when I was in middle school, it was likely that even when I was very young, like in kindergarten, she was seeing some of the effects. There was high blood pressure involved, but it's hard to say whether that was a cause or a symptom.
When your kidneys don't work, your body can't clean out all of the toxins in your bloodstream. Along with loss of energy, there is some loss of mental acuity due to all the toxin buildup. Like glasses, things get a little foggy, and when treatment is applied (prescription lenses, or a new functioning organ), it's like a light went on.
When I see how much more vibrant my mom is now with her transplant, I can't imagine having to be put in a position where you might lose the kidney again and go back on dialysis. Especially when it's something preventable, like remembering (or being able to) take your pills. And economically, it's just ridiculous! Dialysis costs more than anti-rejection drugs, so why pay for the more expensive one!
Thankfully, my family's well off enough to pay for the drugs right now, and we're just waiting until she turns 65 in a couple of years apparently. The fact that her drugs alone costs more than I make from my job(s) is baffling.
My mom had peritoneal dialysis. It was actually pretty nice - she had this machine that she could set up at home and it was like setting up your own IV. (I'm volunteering at the children's hospital now, and the kids I play with on the Oncology floor are sorta like this - they've got their own little chemo bags all hooked up, but otherwise they can run around and hang out while they wait for them to finish dripping).
She had surgery to have a catheter in her tummy, and then she'd just hook up these big bags of fluid that would chill out in her peritoneal (abdominal) cavity for a while. Diffusion in action - all the toxins would leech out into the solution, and then later she would rotate and take the fluid out and put new fluid in. It took a little while to transfer the fluid, but then you could do whatever you wanted once it was at work in your belly. My mom was (and still is) a stay at home mom, so she thankfully had flexibility to do this throughout the day. Although there are some different cycle lengths, like where it does it super fast all night long instead of spaced out throughout the day. And some people who have flexible work schedules are able to schedule these throughout, like before work, during a lunch break, after work, and then at night, etc.
The other kind of dialysis is pretty involved. It involves going into a clinic and hooking up to this machine for like 4 hours or something, and you have to go like 3 times a week. You get one tube put into each arm. Blood goes out one side, gets cleaned, and goes into the other side. (I recently saw that for double whole blood donation, there is a machine like this. I don't qualify for the weight requirement though. I cut it pretty close as it is when it comes to giving a single pint of blood. Weight wise, and usually iron count wise. Speaking of which, I'm scheduled to donate next Thursday... better start increasing the MEAT! consumption...) People looked pretty miserable when I visit one of these clinics once for a school report =( Dialysis kinda works, but renal replacement is really the best treatment.
There was a little feature on various people with kidney disease in the times at an earlier time which I found pretty informative:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/the-voices-of-kidney-disease/
I'm sad about all the healthcare debate right now. I don't know all the details of the plans going through congress and everything.... But the public outcry really depresses me. These two cute British girls on the Amtrak a while back were baffled to hear that their UCLA host didn't have good guaranteed healthcare like they do back in the UK. "You mean people just get sick and then they just don't get treatment and they die, and that's ok?" one of them half-joking asked at one point... ::sigh:: All these unfounded rumors and fear inspired complaints people have are just ridiculous and inducing unnecessary hysteria. It just makes so much more economic sense to insure everyone. Doctors will take care of people whether or not they have insurance, and regardless of their ability to pay, and preventative care does wonders for lowering health costs.
Set to some music by REM, it had snapshots of real individuals who have written their healthcare woes on some posterboards, giving a face to, and describing some of the insurance problems folks are facing today.
I also just recently read an article in the NYTimes, which is personally relevant to me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/health/policy/14kidney.html
My mother had a kidney transplant... mmm... about 6-7ish years ago, I want to say. We don't talk much in our family about my parents' expenses, like the mortgage cost, or the medical bills, etc. Well, a little about the medical bills, like how much an individual prescription costs when someone picks something up, perhaps. I've thankfully mostly been in good health, so usually I don't pay much besides the copay ($10-20 or so). Except my glasses. Ugh. I didn't realize how nice my Kaiser optical insurance was, nor how bad my eyes actually are, until I got my own job. Even with insurance, they're like $300, which is not that bad compared to some other things, I suppose. A quick side story:
My eyesight's pretty bad. A lot of people think their vision is bad, because they feel like they can't really see without their corrective lenses, or because they immediately see such a difference when they are wearing them. But usually it's not as bad as they think. I've always known I was pretty nearsighted... I've had glasses since I was 5, and whenever you meet someone else with glasses, you often switch and compare. Or even people without glasses want to try them on. and everyone had always commented that my glasses are strong enough to make them dizzy ^^; Anyway, I'm up to like -8 diopters now. and then there's this other number about your astigmatism. And it was only like -1.5 or -2 or something. So compared to 8, I didn't think that was that bad. But clearly that was false ^^;
Anyway, the NYTimes article talks about how it's pretty ridiculous that Medicare will pay for dialysis, at about $9000 a month. They'll pay for a kidney transplant ~$100k+. Then if you're under 65, they'll pay for 3 years of anti-rejection drugs ($1-3k per month). (If you're over 65, they'll continue to pay. I guess chornic kidney failure is one of the exceptions to the 65 year old requirement for Medicare - if you're in end stage renal disease, they'll cover you regardless of your age). Why invest all this money in a kidney transplant and then not continue to pay for the medications a person will need for the rest of their life to maintain that investment? I feel the situation in the article is particularly horrible because this woman had living donors... And she's on round 2 of this cycle now=(
The wait time for organs is long. My mom was on the waitlist for 5 years, and I think she was pretty lucky that it wasn't longer. A lot of people die before they even get to the top of the waitlist. The change when she got her kidney was drastic. It was a cadaver kidney, from a otherwise healthy 30-something year old. So it will likely last her quite a while. Her energy levels are way up. When you're chronically sick, you sort of get used to the changes. And with renal failure, it creeps up on you slowly, apparently. They never found the cause of my mom's kidney failure, but although it was diagnosed sometime when I was in middle school, it was likely that even when I was very young, like in kindergarten, she was seeing some of the effects. There was high blood pressure involved, but it's hard to say whether that was a cause or a symptom.
When your kidneys don't work, your body can't clean out all of the toxins in your bloodstream. Along with loss of energy, there is some loss of mental acuity due to all the toxin buildup. Like glasses, things get a little foggy, and when treatment is applied (prescription lenses, or a new functioning organ), it's like a light went on.
When I see how much more vibrant my mom is now with her transplant, I can't imagine having to be put in a position where you might lose the kidney again and go back on dialysis. Especially when it's something preventable, like remembering (or being able to) take your pills. And economically, it's just ridiculous! Dialysis costs more than anti-rejection drugs, so why pay for the more expensive one!
Thankfully, my family's well off enough to pay for the drugs right now, and we're just waiting until she turns 65 in a couple of years apparently. The fact that her drugs alone costs more than I make from my job(s) is baffling.
My mom had peritoneal dialysis. It was actually pretty nice - she had this machine that she could set up at home and it was like setting up your own IV. (I'm volunteering at the children's hospital now, and the kids I play with on the Oncology floor are sorta like this - they've got their own little chemo bags all hooked up, but otherwise they can run around and hang out while they wait for them to finish dripping).
She had surgery to have a catheter in her tummy, and then she'd just hook up these big bags of fluid that would chill out in her peritoneal (abdominal) cavity for a while. Diffusion in action - all the toxins would leech out into the solution, and then later she would rotate and take the fluid out and put new fluid in. It took a little while to transfer the fluid, but then you could do whatever you wanted once it was at work in your belly. My mom was (and still is) a stay at home mom, so she thankfully had flexibility to do this throughout the day. Although there are some different cycle lengths, like where it does it super fast all night long instead of spaced out throughout the day. And some people who have flexible work schedules are able to schedule these throughout, like before work, during a lunch break, after work, and then at night, etc.
The other kind of dialysis is pretty involved. It involves going into a clinic and hooking up to this machine for like 4 hours or something, and you have to go like 3 times a week. You get one tube put into each arm. Blood goes out one side, gets cleaned, and goes into the other side. (I recently saw that for double whole blood donation, there is a machine like this. I don't qualify for the weight requirement though. I cut it pretty close as it is when it comes to giving a single pint of blood. Weight wise, and usually iron count wise. Speaking of which, I'm scheduled to donate next Thursday... better start increasing the MEAT! consumption...) People looked pretty miserable when I visit one of these clinics once for a school report =( Dialysis kinda works, but renal replacement is really the best treatment.
There was a little feature on various people with kidney disease in the times at an earlier time which I found pretty informative:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/the-voices-of-kidney-disease/
I'm sad about all the healthcare debate right now. I don't know all the details of the plans going through congress and everything.... But the public outcry really depresses me. These two cute British girls on the Amtrak a while back were baffled to hear that their UCLA host didn't have good guaranteed healthcare like they do back in the UK. "You mean people just get sick and then they just don't get treatment and they die, and that's ok?" one of them half-joking asked at one point... ::sigh:: All these unfounded rumors and fear inspired complaints people have are just ridiculous and inducing unnecessary hysteria. It just makes so much more economic sense to insure everyone. Doctors will take care of people whether or not they have insurance, and regardless of their ability to pay, and preventative care does wonders for lowering health costs.