>From working in the ER for 20 years, I have seen just how restrictive and penny-pinching corporate healthcare is...
Your child has a horrible earache at 2 AM? The child is screaming in agony so you drive to the local ER. The ER staff calls your insurance company/HMO for authorization only to be denied because it is not a "life-threatening emergency". What do they instruct the ER to tell the parents? Give the child some Tylenol and go to the walk-in clinic at 8:00 AM. Vomiting your brains out in the middle of the night because of food poisoning? Go to the ER because you can't stop vomiting...DENIED! Go to your primary physician when his office opens. Your child has a high fever. You can't seem to bring it down. Unless the fever is over 101 when you arrive at the ER, you will be DENIED! Go to your pediatrician's office when it opens in the morning. Get into a car accident and you need to be admitted to the hospital? You are 100 miles from your insurance/HMO's contracted hospital...DENIED. Unless you are critical and unstable, you are put into an ambulance and transferred to your contracted hospital. Most of the time, your contracted hospital is not a Trauma Center so you will get inexperienced and substandard care. Gee, in any of these scenarios, if the patient would of had government insurance (Medi-Care or Medicaid), they would have been APPROVED. In fact, the ER would not even be required to call first for authorization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't listen to people like Kama, OhioMark, Lew, LadyBug, and Ms. Con...they couldn't be more WRONG. They have no real world experience. They are only sounding boards of the pundits. Nearly all nurses and doctors support the "public option" (as does the American Medical Association). We have a perfect opportunity to reform healthcare and I have a feeling we are going to give in to the Republicans and BLOW IT! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
