Quote:
Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive
Agree.
Don't know how they do it over there, but here the annoying thing (may vary from insurance company to insurance company; I don't know) is that even if you know that surgery is the only real cure, the insurance makes you jump through some ridiculous hoops first. In my case it was (A) orthoscopic surgery to clean out some bits of grit that showed up on the x-ray, followed by (B) series of cortisone shots. Neither provided anything more than maybe a few weeks of relief. My surgeon was pretty frank about it: both treatments were nothing more than band-aids and knee replacement surgery was inevitable, but the insurance wouldn't pay unless I went through with them and they were documented not to work. I made a comment to my surgeon that the insurance company was probably hoping I'd die in the meantime, and he just laughed, but I'm not so sure I was totally wrong on that. I was in my upper 60's when I had the surgery.
The upshot was that I wasted nearly two years hobbling around on a bum knee before I finally had the surgery. Knee has been great for six years now: stands up to some pretty rigorous tennis a couple of times a week, and a six-mile walk on the other days.
|
Interesting! Just yesterday, we were talking about the differences btw Medicare and Medicare Advantage Plans.
My husband just had knee replacement surgery. The Dr. met with us and we immediately scheduled it. We certainly did a lot of research 1st, but no co-pay, no waste of time.
P.T. after and it's all good. What a Blessing to have a serious surgery go so smoothly.