Health insurance does not equal health care!
Thursday October 18, 2007By Anonymous
Our policy makers need to realize that “HAVING INSURANCE” does NOT mean that you will get good health care or ANY health care…
I am a health care provider. I have been a Pedaitric Nurse Practitioner for 20 years. I have seen physicians and health care facilities TURN AWAY patients WITH state sponsored health insurance for years. The state of IL was, at one point, so far behind on payments to providers for services rendered, and reimbursed so little for services that a Chief Financial Officer told us he would rather see us SIT IDLE than see a MEDICAID PATIENT! It cost us more to access the chart, see the patient, and bill the state for the service than we EVER got paid!
I have found it easier at times to get a specialist to see a patient FOR FREE than to get him to accept the medical card. He’d rather write off the service as a charitable donation than deal with the insuance. I’ve had facilities book an appointment 4 months out for a medicaid patient then “find” an appointment within a week when I told them I was mistaken and the patient had other insurance!
I have seen children being treated for cancer have to change doctors and health facilities MID TREATMENT because their HMO changed preferred providers!
I currently have “good insurance.” Yet the first available appointment for me to see an experienced inernist in Madison is 3 months from now! And I know how to operate the system to GET an appointment!
I am still working in Illinois… I was told when I offered to volunteer a few hours at a Madison Community Health Center that they “didn’t really need more providers” …I have been told by health care providers and health care employers that the Madison area doesn’t employ Pediatric Nurse Practitioners because the area is “HMO dominated,” “medically OVERSERVED,” and that “access to care is not a problem here because everybody accepts medicaid and everybody, except illegal residents, can get state insurance”… REALLY? I wonder how many patients I’d have if I opened a storefront clinic and said “pay me on the barter system!”
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That is really the heart of the matter. Government provided insurance means nothing. It just means that you can claim to have insurance – it does not mean that you can claim to get good health care. It’s a vicious circle that is being advocated here, and it is one that will have to end in a complete conversion from private health care to government run health care.
Anybody who think that government funded health insurance is an answer needs to seriously reevaluate the situation. I have heard many horror stories from people who have had to deal with BadgerCare – including the death of a child – which is very indicative of a government run health system. I am also a veteran and have seen the way the military and VA health systems work and would NEVER wish them upon anybody. Just because you supposedly have coverage does not mean you will get quality service (if any at all).
— Ryan · 413 days ago
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I’ve been trying to assist my medically needy adult nephew who is disabled enough to not be able to hold a job for any length of time. Those he can hold certainly don’t offer insurance. Though he’s apparently not disabled enough to get social security benefits or Medicaid. And as a single man with no dependent children he does not qualify for any state insurance. I’ve set up payment plans so I can pay providers directly for his care. Even so, one provider didn’t seem to want that either. He told me we should apply for and come back when my nephew got Medicaid. It is very frustrating to spend hours on the phone and in appointments talking to agency after agency only to get turned away and then the provder won’t believe you that there is no “help” available. In the meantime, my nephew has almost choked to death at least once because he can’t chew good enough. We need health care, however it is paid for.
— Beverly · 395 days ago
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