A Swedish man who's legs were amputated due to complications from diabetes was denied a powered wheelchair because the government health service was "uncertain if the impairment was permanent".

The manufacturer of the wheelchairs provided the man with one on loan after a media expose. Private business to the rescue after government health care missteps?

I'm so looking forward to government bureaucrats in charge of our health care.

http://www.thelocal.se/37678/20111201/#

If you read the article closely, it stated the man was to be given an electric wheelchair but he did not want it. He wanted something like the "Rascal" power scooter. Our Medicare does not furnish those free either. If doctor approved, our Medicare will pay about 80% and your gap insurance may pick up the rest - or you pay the rest.

I cannot believe you look for articles as obscure as this one just to poke fun at our government. Usually, you are one that says government giveaways to the needy should be taken away.

I only hope that Obamacare gets struck down by the Supreme Court before we get to really appreciate what it is all about...

Originally Posted by buggyone

If you read the article closely, it stated the man was to be given an electric wheelchair but he did not want it. He wanted something like the "Rascal" power scooter. Our Medicare does not furnish those free either. If doctor approved, our Medicare will pay about 80% and your gap insurance may pick up the rest - or you pay the rest.

I cannot believe you look for articles as obscure as this one just to poke fun at our government. Usually, you are one that says government giveaways to the needy should be taken away.

If you read the story you would have noticed that the one the health service wanted to give him required an operator. He wouldn't be self sufficient. Read it again.

Like I said about you, and I say this as your friend; you are a knee-jerk liberal. You fight the leftist cause come hell or high water. You really want to defend this?

Originally Posted by KatzPajamas

I only hope that Obamacare gets struck down by the Supreme Court before we get to really appreciate what it is all about...

Don't hold your breath......on second thought.

In respects to Obamacare he was smart to send it to the supreme court. They will find it to be ok the bad part is it will not be able to repeal it. Maybe in 20 years. I had some people from Canada stay at the hotel and the lady worked for the government and they said you better hope that the bill would not pass. This was in2010. They told me it will take them one to two years to get a medical problem taken care. Her husband had a heart condition and he said if he had waited for the process in Canada he would have died. They came to the states and paid for the surgery and was fine. This is the problem with Obamacare or any government health care program, they dont want older people to live. I truly hope the American people wake up think of your grandkids and the life they face. And it is not just Obamacare its every thing that is going on right now. We have 80000 people that live here right now and no is grouping a fight against the injustise that is being done to the American people. I'm not against the dems or rep. . What I am against is the leadership we have in Washington now and that is just about everyone. Take a long hard honest look at or government and look at the future before its to late for your grandkids. We dont matter anymore we're getting old not a lot of time left help the young ones out because they cant vote yet. Of course if the worst happens,and it probably will the kids wont know ant different anyway, we will be gone and what do we care. That is the attitude I am seeing now days. Sorry if I offend any one.

In Sweden they have a .2 DUI rate. Hence according to a WSJ sometime ago when Swedes go drinking many just walk because .2 is about one drink. The Swedes are always thinking about their national health care nd with this law their population drinks less and walks more. By the way its .5 in Denmark so they drive more

Originally Posted by DDoug

In respects to Obamacare he was smart to send it to the supreme court. They will find it to be ok the bad part is it will not be able to repeal it. Maybe in 20 years. I had some people from Canada stay at the hotel and the lady worked for the government and they said you better hope that the bill would not pass. This was in2010. They told me it will take them one to two years to get a medical problem taken care. Her husband had a heart condition and he said if he had waited for the process in Canada he would have died. They came to the states and paid for the surgery and was fine. This is the problem with Obamacare or any government health care program,........We dont matter anymore we're getting old not a lot of time left help the young ones out because they cant vote yet. Of course if the worst happens,and it probably will the kids wont know ant different anyway, we will be gone and what do we care. That is the attitude I am seeing now days. Sorry if I offend any one.

Getting a shiny new "free" insurance card from the federal government does not mean there is a doctor who can take on new patients and actually see you. None of the politicians is talking about the shortage of primary-care physicians across the country.

Increasing the number of medical school graduates does nothing to help the problem when there are not enough residency-training slots in which they must get trained in teaching hospitals. Residency training is funded by Medicare, and Medicare is being cut....with smaller cuts already being made, the new healthcare law to cut $248 billion from Medicare over 10 years. The article linked explains the problem with too little funding for residency training slots for the increasing number of medical school graduates.

Massachusetts learned quickly the results of having too few primary care doctors (more E.R. visits--the most costly place to treat routine maladies--because patients could not get an appointment with a primary dr., and higher costs and insurance premiums).....while MA has the highest number of physicians per patient than any other state! Having an insurance card does not mean a doctor can take you, and the ones we know and have had are already so overworked that they're looking at retiring--they're TIRED, and are fed up with being told what they can do by a bureaucrat reading from a medicare or insurance company computer screen.

This is not to say that major changes are not needed, nor to keep the status quo. The system does need financing overhaul. But the problem coming is the probable wreckage of the good care most Americans DO have, because of the financing problems politicians are only worsening.

"Medicare covers a portion of the cost of training a resident by paying teaching hospitals based on how many Medicare patients use the hospitals. The hospital then has to come up with the balance of the cost, which differs depending on the region.

The amount of money Medicare pays to hospitals has been frozen for nearly 15 years and more residency slots have not been created in many states....."
See:
http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee....html?page=all

"...Obama’s proposal to cut $248 billion from Medicare over 10 years includes $1 billion in trims to teaching hospitals, which could lead to fewer residency slots for doctor training programs....

Hospitals spend about $13 billion annually to train residents, Grover said. That breaks down to about $145,000 per resident, including the average first-year salary of $46,000, he said.

‘Tremendous Costs’

“Teaching hospitals carry tremendous additional costs to provide training,” said Sam Hawgood, medical school dean at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s not simply hiring a resident and putting them to work. A huge amount of infrastructure is required.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...r-funding.html

Originally Posted by rubicon

In Sweden they have a .2 DUI rate. Hence according to a WSJ sometime ago when Swedes go drinking many just walk because .2 is about one drink. The Swedes are always thinking about their national health care nd with this law their population drinks less and walks more. By the way its .5 in Denmark so they drive more

They're probably also thinking about gasoline costing around $8.50 per gallon.

Originally Posted by RichieLion

A Swedish man who's legs were amputated due to complications from diabetes was denied a powered wheelchair because the government health service was "uncertain if the impairment was permanent".

The manufacturer of the wheelchairs provided the man with one on loan after a media expose. Private business to the rescue after government health care missteps?

I'm so looking forward to government bureaucrats in charge of our health care.

http://www.thelocal.se/37678/20111201/#

And the answer is our current system where an insurance adjuster lets you rot?

Or the example of my grandmother who was put into surgery AGAINST HER WILL and forced to endure FIVE YEARS of strokes and other debilitating conditions?

I'll give you this - your example is a good example of what to defend against if we ever end up changing the system we have.

Originally Posted by djplong

And the answer is our current system where an insurance adjuster lets you rot?

Or the example of my grandmother who was put into surgery AGAINST HER WILL and forced to endure FIVE YEARS of strokes and other debilitating conditions?

I'll give you this - your example is a good example of what to defend against if we ever end up changing the system we have.

If not your grandmother herself, a family member/guardian had to sign consent forms prior to any procedure being done on Grama...What's your point?

Ummm.. No, we didn't.

Katz, please understand that the anger you're going to hear is not directed at you but at the system that did what I'm about to describe.

I was in the room with my grandmother while she was having a heart attack that literally lasted hours. I wasn't the only one there. My adoptive mother and a few other family members were there. My grandmother signed DNR papers IN FRONT OF ALL OF US - and we all agreed with her decision. She was in unbelievable amounts of pain.

We were told by her doctor that she was in no condition for a bypass operation. They simply couldn't put her under anesthesia because her circulation was so bad and they couldn't "harvest" any donor blood vessels from her legs.

We said our goodbyes. It was painful but we felt lucky that we were able to do what so many people never get to do - say those last words.

What happened next is something I *wish* I was making up.

We all left the hospital. We basically went home and waited for 'the call'. For a couple of days we heard nothing. Calls to the hospital resulted in "she's resting and under sedation for the pain".

Then we discovered she was on her way to surgery. They took an unconscious woman with NO family agreement and put her into surgery that would cripple her for the rest of her life (long story but she'd never get out of the hospital until winter which meant she couldn't walk, was too cold to get outside and was bedridden for the next several years as stroke after stroke continued to assault her).

The god-cursed pathetic excuse of a doctor made a claim that he was seeking additional DRG days so that she could stay in the hospital. What this scum-sucking doctor did NOT know what that my adoptive mother knew something about Medicare. She went off on him like a nuke and laid out several other diagnosis codes that could have given her the DRG days she needed. So why the surgery? Because that's what made him the most money. You know what they say - ALWAYS follow the money when you're trying to figure out why something is done.

My point is that you can find individual examples of ANYTHING going wrong with ANY system. Indeed it's a LOT easier to find someone in this country screwed over by 'the system' of private insurance we have. Don't want to look hard for that? Just google "medical bankruptcy" and read a few stories. Try "medical tourism" to see how 10 times as many people go from the US to other countries for medical treatment than do the other way around.

NOT A SINGLE ONE OF *ANY* PROPOSAL that has YET to come down the pike - even Obama's original Blue Sky Public Option plan has shown ANY way of fighting the single-biggest problem with our "system" - the fact that we pay more than TWICE as much, per capita, than ANY OTHER COUNTRY for our health care 'system'.

DPlong,

That is a terrible story about your grandmother. I would suspect that your family would have a cause of action lawsuit against that doctor and hospital.

I have a story, too, but definitely not as terrible as yours. My sister-in-law died from colon cancer at age 52 a few years ago. Her father was 83 at the time and confined to bed and wheelchair in a nursing home. His doctor insisted the old timer be given a colonoscopy since the daughter had died of colon cancer. In my viewpoint, this was only to add money to the Medicaid bill the doctor was submitting every month.

djplong~ Who signed the surgery consent? Apparently not a comatose lady? You might want to find that out for your own peace of mind. If you happen to find that there is no signature on file, Grama should find a lawyer who is also driven by the almighty dollar. She may not have her health restored, but a large settlement can make life a whole lot more comfortable...

Katz,

It happened in the late 1980s. NOBODY signed the papers. The doctor went ON HIS OWN with something akin to approving it HIMSELF certifying that it was best for the patient. ...or that's what we were told anyway. It was near impossible to find anyone who would talk to us on the record. In my heart of hearts I believe the hospital was, at least to a degree, "in on it" - I was working in the health care industry at the time and I know the premium and importance that hospitals put on inpatient stays back then. MAJOR profit center.

As we had no smoking gun, and nobody at the hospital or doctor's office would incriminate the so called 'doctor' who's parent's, IMO, were never married (if you get my drift), no lawyer would take the case. My grandmother was in no condition for a fight and we decided to let it lie since changing doctors and hospitals could have been even more traumatic. Then the strokes started and it all went to hell...

When I say she was pretty much tortured for five years, by that I mean she was in agony with a mind falling apart until she died five years after the Dr. Greedy cashed his checks.