Through my mother recent illness, I have learned a lot about the state of Medicare. There is some myth and some facts — let me explain.
Medicare started out as a government run program, but it has now been taken over by private, for profit insurance companies. I follow the news and did not know this had happened until I got involved with it through my mother’s illness. That is the thing about health care in general, until you have to use the services you make all sorts of assumptions about how it works. The people in the business know the truth but they are making $BILLIONS in profits keeping the truth from everybody else.
Most senors sign up for a combined Medicare and HMO/PPO plan with a private insurance company. My mother signed up years ago with a local company because her favorite doctor suggested it. Over the years, this local company was acquired many times and is now owned by Health Net.
Health Net is a HORRIBLE company. If you are with Health Net you have a great chance of dying if you need serious health care. Their web site is designed to confuse. Just recently, they converted their attachments from pdf to sdo. They still claim they are pdf files but you can’t view them. Turns out you have to get Adobe Version 9 to view them. It is impossible to determine that on the Health Net Web site. There are many other problems with the web site. For example, my mother need to go to a skilled nursing facility but you can’t use the web site to find any facilities. Likewise, there is no urgent care place she can go to. And, it is even difficult to figure out that there is only ONE, yes ONE, hospital she can go to.
With her Health Net HMO my mother can ONLY go to ONE hospital — a crummy one. If she needs blood work, she can only go to one lab. The lab is hard to get into, long waits, and no appointments. If she needs a procedure she has to drive many miles with long waits to get it done. Health Net takes my mother’s Medicare money and then makes it very difficult for my mother to get access to services. We will be opting out of this Medicare HMO plan at the end of the year and going Original Medicare. Here’s why:
With Original Medicare you can go to any hospital you want. You can get blood and tests done virtually anywhere. Everybody accepts Medicare. Also, with original Medicare you can get remote services, e.g. remote x-rays and blood work. So, if you are old and have a hard time traveling, people will come to you.
The Medicare HMO is literally trying to kill my mother. This is the truth — I am not even exaggerating this for a second. They want to limit her access to treatment to such an extent that she will die. If you want to talk about “Death Panels” the U.S. already has them and it is private insurance companies limiting access to health care through Medicare. Original Medicare is the solution and the HMO private companies are the problem.
It is not easy to opt out of Medicare with private insurance companies. You need to get an online account at medicare.gov and the (de)enrollment period begins on November 15th to be effective January 1st. My mother will be opting out of Health Net HMO — what we prefer to call Health Not. If you know somebody on Medicare, get the word out to dump the HMOs. It might cost you a few more bucks, but you will have access to services and it might save your life.
Don’t listen when people say that Medicare is a government run program because the private health insurance companies have completely fucked it up. Opt out of the Medicare HMO and you will get to a pretty great government program. It isn’t perfect because the private insurance company want original Medicare to suck also — they put in the donut hole problem. But, like anything the private sector does, greed is the only goal. The private sector has fucked America and will continue to do so until America elects people who are not kissing the ass of greedy, private corporations.
America is doomed.
Let me first say that I am sorry about your mother’s health problems. Nothing is worse than ill health. Hope she gets better soon. A few points, though. Maybe your mohter’s favorite doctor advised her to go with the HMO becuase he works for it. Its called job security. Maybe he made that decision in his own self interest instead of the interest of his patient. I think Medical Quacks now call that the “Hypocritic Oath”. All Allopathathic Quack doctors now subscribe to it. You must subscribe to it if you want to practice in the disease for profit industry. We do not practice health care in America, we practice disease care and disease management, for profit. Disease is a priceless commodity. Healthy people don’t need insurance, diseased people do. Nobody goes to the doctor because they are “feeling too good” today. Can you imagine if your mother filed an insurance claim stating she went to a Quack Medical Doctor to see why she was so healthy. They’d laugh her all the way to Timbucktu. Sorry that Health Net wants to kill your mother, but yes, it is true. So do the best you can to limit her visits. Stay with her at all times and thoroughly check out all of her prescriptions and any advice that these parasitic Quacks render to her. You see, my mother was killed several years ago by Allopathic Quacks. They kept “adjusting” (increasing) her blood pressure medicine until she fell out of chairs enough and finally down a flight of stairs. That finished the job. And my father was killed in 1981 by Allopathic Quack Oncologists. They irradiated him to death and poisoned him with the most toxic chemicals on earth. Pure Quackery!! And they actually bill for this!!!Would he have died anyway? Probably, but not in a mere 2months and not looking like Farrah Faucet or Patrick Swayze. It might be too late for your 80 something mother to change her ways and her beliefs enough to make a significant difference in her life, but anything is worth a try. Educate yourself and your mother. Naturopathy and Homeopathy are where the future leads us. Allopahty was just an illconcieved experiment gone bad. Other than trauma surgery, these Allopaths are as worthless as teets on a boar hog. They think that everybody was born with a petroleum or radiation deficiency, when in fact, it is an overload of these very toxins that are causing so much disease, along with diet. Diets of sugar, processed starch, pesticides and preservatives (petroleum), irradiated foodstuffs(radiation), and genetically modified organisms are wiping us out. Go to the MD Quack, and he or she will fill you up with more of the same. Any changes that your mother makes will be beneficial. Single payer system? I agree 100%. But don’t expect it and don’t rely on it. Take control of your own health. Only turn to “disease Care” as a last resort. Read and learn!! The info is there. I have beaten many diseases in my life and have not seen a doctor in over 20 years. If I need a doctor, I will see a real doctor, not a Quack. I’ll see a Natureopath.
Single mothers face one of the most challenges job in the world. Believe it or not bringing up a child without the assistance of your male partner is no easy job. This is the situation that shows who is a true caring mother and the one who simply neglects her child just to pursue her own interests neglecting the child. Though it is not an easy job, mothers should for the time-being, put a pause to their materialistic hunger and take the child upbringing as the primary focus in life. Those women who have done this have brought up the best of men in the world and led a happy and fulfilling life. On the other hand there have been women who neglected their children in their tender years just to repent later in their lives.