In the states, if you have some huge crisis, say diabetic cellulitus, leading to an amputation, it could have a huge impact on the rest of your life, either with or without insurance. I didn't have insurance at the time because, 2021 was during Covid and I was finding it hard to get work. The social worker didn't help very much either when she came to assist me while I was in the hospital.
She should have told me that I could apply for healthcare with very low premiums if I was under the poverty level or rather "at" the poverty level. you see, if you don't meet the minimum employment income level, you can't get insurance. But there is a threshold you can enter that will get you the lowest premiums available, and it isn't an insurmountable number.
Because I do gig work, I can't predict how much money I will make each year. But in truth, I am industrious enough to be able to get at least the minimum amount. Although at the time, recovering in the hospital, I did not know what was possible. I was resigned to endure the mechanisms of what "falling through the cracks" had to offer, which as it turned out, was a glorified boarding house. I made more calls to 911 in that year and a half than I had in my entire time on this earth.
At my time of recovering in the hospital. Instead, I found this out near the end of my stay almost by accident with conferring with someone once the open enrollment period started.
Second, in terms of healthcare, there are outside agencies that will assist you. My amputation and recovery in the hospital was 400k. I don't have the exact figure any longer because all my possessions from my previous residence were inadvertently destroyed.
Part of the huge hospital bill, more than half, was, where I was previously staying did not have wide enough doors or ramps for a bariatric wheelchair. And the other reason is, for various reasons, my sister no longer wanted me there. Some of it was due to my own bad issues. I would say I wish I had sat down and communicated with her, and discussed things, but I never did...and she didn't iniate them either.
Some of it was Covid related. I listen and watch things Covid related now with headphones, but I didn't back then. I have no doubt she probably thought the things I was going through were "rantings of conspiracy theorists." Because while she was upstairs listening to Anderson Cooper and CNN, and working in a library at a state school, her brother was listening to "Perspectives of the Pandemic" and was delivering her information on why the pandemic was not going to be the next "Spanish Flu."
I doubt she will ever discuss it with me. We haven't talked since Fathers day of 2023.
DollarFor is an advocate for patients with huge hospital bills. And they helped me. But it wasn't an easy road. It was them writing letters and making calls on my behalf, and me doing the same. I would stay on hold at times for hours. I don't know where I would be if those bills still hung over my head.
But there are a lot of issues about healthcare. that need to be ironed out, the first being that there needs to be a way of transparency. It should be crystal clear how much things cost, but it is fairly opaque. And there are a lot of informed consent issues that should be brought to the forefront. I still am new to a lot of it. Another Substack, "Unbekoming" discusses a lot of the tangential issues that all seems to share similar parallels.
Tom Woods, a libertarian podcast, has had guests on who offer an alternative to the increasingly state and insurance run system. They are networks of healthcare professionals and doctors who it sounds like offer their services based on a subscription model, and from what I understood from these brief podcasts, are very transparent in how much their various interventions cost.
“if you don't meet the minimum employment income level, you can't get insurance.” Is this due to Obamacare? I do not know the mechanics but I do know they differed by state but as Paramedic, my dad complained of being the most expensive free taxi in the world. Folks on public aid would call the ambulance on one pretext or another and being transported to the hospital. As these people did not have a car and there being no public transport in our small town nor no taxis, despite not being required, the ambulance was forced out of fear of bad PR to wait for the patient to be released, they having nothing wrong with them, the wait was not toooo long, to bring them back to their public housing. On the way home, the “patient” would demand for them to stop at the milk store, which was reason for the ruse in the first place. Now, I do not think that you would abuse the system thus, but is there no longer any program for people in your situation that allows for almost automatic health care assistance. Medicaid?
I think I related this to you during 2023 when I was in the "boarding house" but there was this one guy, who was diabetic, poor eyesight, and was constantly having me call the ambulance. And yes, it was ridiculous. There were two other guys in the house who had wheelchairs, and I didn't understand why, because they had both their legs and I know they could both stand up.
Heck, even when I fell last Father's day in 2023 which necessitated a call to my sister that was the last time we spoke, I ended up taking an Uber to the hospital, not an ambulance. I should have also clarified, that my calls to 911 were not for me, but for the other tenants at the house. I called it like three times for one tenant who was autistic and had seizures, I called the hospital 9 times for the diabetic guy mentioned above and I was not going to deny him the ambulance rides. Who am I to say who is sick and isn't? Another couple of times I called the cops, once for another tenant who had growing senility and who wandered off. And finally one guy called the cops on me, Matthew who was schizophrenic and thought that I was knocking on his open door keeping him up all night.
I thought Ocare probably played a part in that. So much for helping those who did not have health insurance. Not surprising in the least.
Oh, I was not even responding to how many 911 calls you made. While I did not recall the story you retell here, it must have been internalized as I did not think anything of that high number. Though, I may have attributed it to the fact that you lost your leg and that the conditions of your lodging being less than ideal.
That is another facet of Japan’s awesome healthcare system. “Taraimawashi”, the runaround. Hospitals can and do refuse patients who come by ambulance. This often leads to Monty Pythonesque headlines like “13 Hospital Denial Proves Fatal for Accident Victim”. Ya don’t say. Well well. So, people go by their family’s car, or taxi. When my kid ran into a pole on the playground the first day in elementary school, his teacher called a taxi to take him to the local hospital. We paid her back for the cab fare. That is way any statistic on how many people go to hospital for any specific reason is low as the only numbers available are those reported by the national fire depart who operate the ambulances here. The only way to learn of all those who make to the hospital any other way is to physically call each and every hospital in the entire country and ask as they do not have report to anybody.
I am blessed. My blind brother is not. Getting ready for my trip to him, a 2-3 day drive. We talk almost every day and I wouldn't function without him. SS, Medicare, cost of living, debts and healthcare in "our golden years" are our focus.
"Universal healthcare" is a boondoggle, a scam, a tool of power and an opportunity for waste, corruption and injustice.
Visit or live in a country whose government has imposed such programs and you WILL know.
My parents' experience in UK was a revelation. Covered, as a visa-holding elite exec, thinking that "privatized" system was okay, they waited. And waited.
Finally flew back to USA for other-than-homeopathic long-wait care. US diagnostics determined cancer.
Lesson: gov't program=gov't waste, class warfare and the implementation of LCD goods, services and methods.
I hope you have strength and your efforts are successful in keeping your family together.
I can offer you this anecdote.
In the states, if you have some huge crisis, say diabetic cellulitus, leading to an amputation, it could have a huge impact on the rest of your life, either with or without insurance. I didn't have insurance at the time because, 2021 was during Covid and I was finding it hard to get work. The social worker didn't help very much either when she came to assist me while I was in the hospital.
She should have told me that I could apply for healthcare with very low premiums if I was under the poverty level or rather "at" the poverty level. you see, if you don't meet the minimum employment income level, you can't get insurance. But there is a threshold you can enter that will get you the lowest premiums available, and it isn't an insurmountable number.
Because I do gig work, I can't predict how much money I will make each year. But in truth, I am industrious enough to be able to get at least the minimum amount. Although at the time, recovering in the hospital, I did not know what was possible. I was resigned to endure the mechanisms of what "falling through the cracks" had to offer, which as it turned out, was a glorified boarding house. I made more calls to 911 in that year and a half than I had in my entire time on this earth.
At my time of recovering in the hospital. Instead, I found this out near the end of my stay almost by accident with conferring with someone once the open enrollment period started.
Second, in terms of healthcare, there are outside agencies that will assist you. My amputation and recovery in the hospital was 400k. I don't have the exact figure any longer because all my possessions from my previous residence were inadvertently destroyed.
Part of the huge hospital bill, more than half, was, where I was previously staying did not have wide enough doors or ramps for a bariatric wheelchair. And the other reason is, for various reasons, my sister no longer wanted me there. Some of it was due to my own bad issues. I would say I wish I had sat down and communicated with her, and discussed things, but I never did...and she didn't iniate them either.
Some of it was Covid related. I listen and watch things Covid related now with headphones, but I didn't back then. I have no doubt she probably thought the things I was going through were "rantings of conspiracy theorists." Because while she was upstairs listening to Anderson Cooper and CNN, and working in a library at a state school, her brother was listening to "Perspectives of the Pandemic" and was delivering her information on why the pandemic was not going to be the next "Spanish Flu."
I doubt she will ever discuss it with me. We haven't talked since Fathers day of 2023.
DollarFor is an advocate for patients with huge hospital bills. And they helped me. But it wasn't an easy road. It was them writing letters and making calls on my behalf, and me doing the same. I would stay on hold at times for hours. I don't know where I would be if those bills still hung over my head.
But there are a lot of issues about healthcare. that need to be ironed out, the first being that there needs to be a way of transparency. It should be crystal clear how much things cost, but it is fairly opaque. And there are a lot of informed consent issues that should be brought to the forefront. I still am new to a lot of it. Another Substack, "Unbekoming" discusses a lot of the tangential issues that all seems to share similar parallels.
Tom Woods, a libertarian podcast, has had guests on who offer an alternative to the increasingly state and insurance run system. They are networks of healthcare professionals and doctors who it sounds like offer their services based on a subscription model, and from what I understood from these brief podcasts, are very transparent in how much their various interventions cost.
“if you don't meet the minimum employment income level, you can't get insurance.” Is this due to Obamacare? I do not know the mechanics but I do know they differed by state but as Paramedic, my dad complained of being the most expensive free taxi in the world. Folks on public aid would call the ambulance on one pretext or another and being transported to the hospital. As these people did not have a car and there being no public transport in our small town nor no taxis, despite not being required, the ambulance was forced out of fear of bad PR to wait for the patient to be released, they having nothing wrong with them, the wait was not toooo long, to bring them back to their public housing. On the way home, the “patient” would demand for them to stop at the milk store, which was reason for the ruse in the first place. Now, I do not think that you would abuse the system thus, but is there no longer any program for people in your situation that allows for almost automatic health care assistance. Medicaid?
This was due to Obamacare.
I think I related this to you during 2023 when I was in the "boarding house" but there was this one guy, who was diabetic, poor eyesight, and was constantly having me call the ambulance. And yes, it was ridiculous. There were two other guys in the house who had wheelchairs, and I didn't understand why, because they had both their legs and I know they could both stand up.
Heck, even when I fell last Father's day in 2023 which necessitated a call to my sister that was the last time we spoke, I ended up taking an Uber to the hospital, not an ambulance. I should have also clarified, that my calls to 911 were not for me, but for the other tenants at the house. I called it like three times for one tenant who was autistic and had seizures, I called the hospital 9 times for the diabetic guy mentioned above and I was not going to deny him the ambulance rides. Who am I to say who is sick and isn't? Another couple of times I called the cops, once for another tenant who had growing senility and who wandered off. And finally one guy called the cops on me, Matthew who was schizophrenic and thought that I was knocking on his open door keeping him up all night.
I thought Ocare probably played a part in that. So much for helping those who did not have health insurance. Not surprising in the least.
Oh, I was not even responding to how many 911 calls you made. While I did not recall the story you retell here, it must have been internalized as I did not think anything of that high number. Though, I may have attributed it to the fact that you lost your leg and that the conditions of your lodging being less than ideal.
That is another facet of Japan’s awesome healthcare system. “Taraimawashi”, the runaround. Hospitals can and do refuse patients who come by ambulance. This often leads to Monty Pythonesque headlines like “13 Hospital Denial Proves Fatal for Accident Victim”. Ya don’t say. Well well. So, people go by their family’s car, or taxi. When my kid ran into a pole on the playground the first day in elementary school, his teacher called a taxi to take him to the local hospital. We paid her back for the cab fare. That is way any statistic on how many people go to hospital for any specific reason is low as the only numbers available are those reported by the national fire depart who operate the ambulances here. The only way to learn of all those who make to the hospital any other way is to physically call each and every hospital in the entire country and ask as they do not have report to anybody.
My heart goes out to you, brother.
I am blessed. My blind brother is not. Getting ready for my trip to him, a 2-3 day drive. We talk almost every day and I wouldn't function without him. SS, Medicare, cost of living, debts and healthcare in "our golden years" are our focus.
It's a Wonderful Life.
Always look on the bright side of life. As per Monty Python,
I feel your pain.
"Universal healthcare" is a boondoggle, a scam, a tool of power and an opportunity for waste, corruption and injustice.
Visit or live in a country whose government has imposed such programs and you WILL know.
My parents' experience in UK was a revelation. Covered, as a visa-holding elite exec, thinking that "privatized" system was okay, they waited. And waited.
Finally flew back to USA for other-than-homeopathic long-wait care. US diagnostics determined cancer.
Lesson: gov't program=gov't waste, class warfare and the implementation of LCD goods, services and methods.
I hope you have strength and your efforts are successful in keeping your family together.
Efforts? I am a castaway bobbing on an angry sea.
Holy crappoli! I didn't know any of this.