loss absorption

I will begin by recapping something which happened to me back in September. It began with waking up feeling a bit nauseous, and ended with a trip to the ER several hours later; well, at least one would think that’s where it ended.

Don’t worry, I’m fine, but the aftermath of my experience has truly woken me up to the realities of our health care system in this country. I should also add a disclaimer saying I do not know much of the propositions of any of the candidate on this issue, and I’m not sure at this point how to get out of this frightful mess, so I will not profess I have the final answer to this health care nightmare. That all being said, here’s a breakdown of my experience.

June 16^th, 2007 – I officially graduate from UCLA, thereby beginning my tender first steps to the “adult world,” and also thereby losing all my health coverage which until you graduate, is covered by your parents health coverage (assuming they have it).

June 18^th, 2007 – At the urging of my parents (despite thinking it a terrific waste of money at the time), I purchase ‘interim’ health insurance from UCLA amid advertisements from the Alumni Association about what great coverage I was getting and for such a good cost. ($90 per month, major medical only)

September 25^th, 2007 – I wake up feeling a bit sick, but brush it off. On my drive to work I get violently ill. Once at work I tell my boss I have to go to the doctor because I think I have food poisoning. After debating with them for a while I finally go to the doctor, where I can only see a nurse because all the doctors at the office are booked with appointments and do not have scheduled times for emergencies. I was told I had food poisoning, to get some rest and it will clear up in a few days.

September 26^th, 2007 (1AM) – Far too sick to be any food poisoning I have ever known, I am unable to even drive myself to the ER, so I call my dad to take me to the hospital. I am seen by a triage nurse who also believes it is food poisoning, and told there will be a substantial wait since my case is not urgent.

September 26^th, 2007 (3AM) – After getting so sick I can’t even raise my head, I am finally taken back to see the doctor, who diagnoses me in about 2 minutes with not food poisoning, but a severe case of vertigo. (No, not the movie, which seems to be the almost universal first response when I get to this part of the story) I am given 3 bags of IV fluids and medication, 3 different oral medications, and told if it didn’t get any better in a few days I would have to follow up with my own doctor.

September 30^th, 2007 – Still no change in vertigo (pills given to me by the ER doctor very ineffectual, especially since they turned out to be OVER THE COUNTER DRAMAMINE, but in a prescription bottle, which apparently made them cost 3 times more). I call my own doctor and over the phone she prescribes a heavy dose of decongestants which kicked in finally and I begin to feel better.

October 1^st, 2007 – My health insurance from my new job kicks in (just in time, right?)

November 26^th, 2007 – I get my first hospital bill; $5,000. $5,000!!!!!!!!! Then I get a doctor’s bill ($800), bills for the IVs ($50/each), for the lab to process my blood test ($300), and an extra fee for $200 because I was seen at the ER “after hours” which began at 10PM. Oh, and my insurance from UCLA’s deductible was $8,000. I guess when they said ‘major medical only’ they REALLY meant ‘major medical only’.

Here’s the real kicker and the point I’ve been building towards. Despite saying on their bills that financial assistance was offered and payment plans could be discussed, upon calling the hospital, I was told that there was nothing they could do to help me and I owed all the money that was listed or else they would turn me over to a collection agency. I was told, point blank, by the hospital, that the reason my bill was so high was because I had insurance.

What? Apparently, there are so many patients that come for emergency care without insurance (and they have to, by law, treat them anyway), the hospital purposely inflates the bills of patients with insurance, to try and get more money out of the insurance company, to fill the gap with how many uninsured patients they have to treat. It was just too bad that my insurance sucked so much.

Now, I was able to talk my way down to about $4,000 total for all the bills, but that still doesn’t mean I have $4000. I am barely out of college, did not make much money at work, had school and car payments (not to mention car insurance), and have now been hit with this debt which I will be paying off for a long time to come, because most other people don’t pay for insurance.

Now I of course believe that everyone should get medical treatment when it is an emergency, no matter if they have insurance or not, no matter if they have money or not, but the drain on the health care system (ERs mostly) comes primarily from non-emergent cases such as people not paying for health insurance, then going in when they have a cold. My father, who worked in an ER for 10 years and saw these abuses every day, confirmed this. He even spoke with a woman once who was very proud that she had found a way to cheat the system which meant she didn’t have to pay for insurance for her 5 children; when one of them way sick she would simply take them to County Medical Center and tell them she had no insurance, no money, and then give a fake address. The hospital had thus far just written her off as a charity case and they never paid a cent to the hospital. Incidentally, she drove a brand-new Mercedes when my dad spoke to her.

Most of the problem lies in the lack of affordable insurance and the bureaucracy of the entire system coupled with a lack of doctors and nurses, facilities and equipment (oh and don’t get me started on drug companies). But even if these problems are addressed, there will still be people who feed off the system because they are allowed to. The more we are willing to just ‘absorb the loss’ of some, and then translate it to overcharging others, the more screwed-up we are going to make the situation. This isn’t a problem exclusive to ethnicities or immigration status, either, although all these topics collide in one mushy mess. I really think universal health care would be the best way to ultimately solve the problem, circumstances what they are, but even it is not a total fix. But until we get even there, there has to be a fundamental change in people’s attitudes about taking more than what they are entitled to and feeling justified in doing so. Although, maybe we’ll see coverage for everyone before people start taking responsibility for themselves. All I know is when the hospital billing department asked me why I didn’t lie and say I had no insurance, I told her I didn’t because it was wrong. I really hope more people will do that when they’re in my shoes.

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The Votes Are In...and Everybody Loses

The votes are in, but we do not yet have a winner! No, I’m not talking about the United States Presidential Election, which is still a brain-numbing eight months away. Believe it or not, other countries have elections (they’re usually rigged) and a rather interesting one took place over the weekend (yep, it was rigged). That’s right, the absolute disaster of a nation known as Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia for all you former British colonists) voted in an absurd election over the weekend that will determine the fate of their once functional country. See, as stupid and frustrating as the United States election may seem sometimes, it's really not that bad compared to the elections of other nations, like Zimbabwe. At least in the United States election somebody (and some people) actually win and the voting is usually fair (unless it's decided by the Supreme Court). In Zimbabwe, well, not so much.

For a quick history lesson, following Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, they quickly became one of the more successful African nations due to their abundance of arable land and their surprisingly well-run educational system. However, former hero, current President (in office since 1987), and future pariah Robert Mugabe managed to destroy all of that with amazing efficiency.

What started with absurd claims and mismanaged policy, such as Mugabe’s assertion that homosexuality didn’t exist in Zimbabwe before colonization, turned into an absolute nightmare following his 2000 land reforms. Mugabe was pissed that most of Zimbabwe’s arable land (the one that was making the country all that money and feeding all those people) was still being run by the few white people that had stayed after independence. So, Mugabe took it all away from them and gave it all to members of the black African majority. Problem was, these new farmers were pretty much just Mugabe’s friends and didn’t know how to farm (to be unbiased, Mugabe claims that Tony Blair used chemical weapons on the farms to incite instability). Either way, since that time the food production has substantially decreased, life expectancy has dropped like a rock, and unemployment has hit an unheard of 80%. Most impressive is their inflation, which is estimated at a ridiculous 100,500% (some project it at over 1,000,000%, but since inflation really has never been this high anywhere ever, a lot of this is speculation). This has led to Zimbabwe’s awesome $10,000,000 bill (not a typo), worth about $1 US.

Either way, Mugabe’s presidency was kind of up for grabs this weekend, which is surprising for a totalitarian regime. Two opposition parties, most notably Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, looked to stand a legitimate chance to take over the nation. Naturally, all parties involved claimed widespread fraud, likely all were right. Over 3 million more ballots were printed than people in the country and almost 9,000 addresses were registered to vacant land (mostly registered to the surprisingly powerful 1960’s dead, white Rhodesian voters). It doesn’t help that the election was outrageously confusing, with hundreds of local and parliamentary seats being voted on along with the Presidential vote. Shockingly though, Tsvangirai’s MDC is claiming a victory over Mugabe despite few votes having actually been counted. Surely Mugabe will accept this and step down, because that’s what democracy is all about right?

Unfortunately, he will most surely not. Mugabe has already declared the MDC’s claims of victory as tantamount to a coup and despite what results slowly come in (and who in Mugabe’s camp gets killed for botching such a seemingly easy to rig election) one would be foolish to expect Mugabe’s party to go down without a fight. So what does this mean? Well, think of the violence in Kenya last year (caused by a similar election) and times that by superhyperinflation (new word) and over 2 million refugees (that’s about 15% of Zimbabwe’s population) trying desperately to get into South Africa. Yeah, that’s bad.

So yeah, maybe the United States’ election has a lot of problems: it’s long (REALLY LONG), it costs a shitload of money, and the Electoral College is the stupidest thing not called a superdelegate. However, at least in the United States’ election at least 50% of the country can declare themselves a winner; in Zimbabe’s election, like most 3rd world democracies, the only sure thing is that nobody is going to win.


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