The Old Folks Home

[pennyJo1960]

don't I know it... I hate insurance companies they know all that is "Good for us"

 

[pennyJo1960]

She takes it for 5 days along with Zantac for her stomach. It seems to be helping a lot! She takes a test for RF to see if she has rheumatoid arthritis in a week or so

see I was on it a year and half due to Graves it why I have osteoarthritis now

 

[Beer can]

Off to watch netflix, another episode of TURИ, Washington's spies, excellent series IMHO.

 

[perchie.girl]

We use a dentist in this family that only takes No insurance at all. You pay him and he will submit your forms if you want so you can get reimbursed but thats about it.

Hes booked hand over fist.... been doing business like this for 25 years.

deb

 

[JD4570]

I think these crickets are, um, "all in his head," as they say.

That's true. The "crickets" used to come and go..but are now constant.....but with Meniere's it's not the only thing you have to deal with. Lately constant fatigue has seem to set in.......and that is only the beginning.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Micro I love your little "not" runner - it's a really interesting concept and I had never seen or imagined anything like that before.

Insurance companies are not all bad. They do help keep costs down, for all of us. When a new drug comes out, it gets heavily marketed. Providers then prescribe it. It is not necessarily the safest, most effective and most cost effective option on the market. Insurance companies help ensure the provider has tried the older, known, options, first, before moving to an expensive new product (that we often don't know all the side effects on or even how it works in all populations of people - most drug studies are done on very select sub groups of humans and data that isn't favorable is often discarded). Granted, we can dig into this any way you want - why drugs take so long to come to market, why they're so expensive, why we don't know how they really work and what side effects they cause until they're mass prescribed... but the topic was insurance companies being evil. They do serve some purpose in our world.

 

[Beer can]

We use a dentist in this family that only takes No insurance at all. You pay him and he will submit your forms if you want so you can get reimbursed but thats about it.

Hes booked hand over fist.... been doing business like this for 25 years.

deb

One of the dentists we used to go to that's how they did it, we paid them then ins reimbursed us.

 

[microchick]

Micro I love your little "not" runner - it's a really interesting concept and I had never seen or imagined anything like that before.

Insurance companies are not all bad. They do help keep costs down, for all of us. When a new drug comes out, it gets heavily marketed. Providers then prescribe it. It is not necessarily the safest, most effective and most cost effective option on the market. Insurance companies help ensure the provider has tried the older, known, options, first, before moving to an expensive new product (that we often don't know all the side effects on or even how it works in all populations of people - most drug studies are done on very select sub groups of humans and data that isn't favorable is often discarded). Granted, we can dig into this any way you want - why drugs take so long to come to market, why they're so expensive, why we don't know how they really work and what side effects they cause until they're mass prescribed... but the topic was insurance companies being evil. They do serve some purpose in our world.

Oh, I agree. 100%. What I have noticed though is that many of them operate by the old standard that if you take an inch you can try for a mile. I am more concerned with the power that has been given to the insurance companies in general.

Drugs aside, it is why hospitals 40 years ago were charging 100 dollars for a package of 8 sterile 4X4s. Prices go up in order to offset the losses encountered by the insurance companies.

Have you ever encountered a patient in your work setting who has negotiated a 'cash at the time of service' contract with your hospital? They bypass insurance completely and pay out of pocket for services. I've heard of people doing it for Obstetric services that do not have insurance. Bypassing the insurance saves them a ton of money.When all is said and done, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, etc are running a business and a business wants to make a profit.

Things are happening that are making that harder and harder for them to do and the end result is higher costs for the patient.

Interesting tho how they ride herd on the pharmacutical companies. I have to agree that is good and shines a bad light on the FDA who is supposed to be doing what the insurance comanies are doing. Somebody isn't doing their job if they are letting unproven drugs out.

Years ago I can remember encountering patients who were wanting the Lasix treatment for their eyes and asking DH what his opinion of it was. He was honest with them and told them it was too new to draw conclusions on what the long term effects of the proceedure were going to be. This is after it first came out. Before we retired it was proving itself to be a viable proceedure for vision corretion but when it first came out, no one knew what it was going to do down the line.

Thus the term 'practicing' medicine.

Yes, I enjoyed doing the 'needlepoint' project but I probably won't do another one. One thing it did was get me on a roll with my projects. I drug out a rag rug I started over two years ago and never finished and am working on it now. I'd get it done a lot faster if I stopped having to tear it apart and redo it every 5 rows or so. LOL

 

[superchemicalgirl]

I work for a non-profit hospital so we don't really deal with insurance/cash/etc.

Unfortunately it isn't the FDA's job to determine whether a drug sought by a company to be approved adds anything to the market. It is only their job to review what the company gave them for data and make a determination whether the drug is safe and effective. Companies will extremely vet their cohorts, to improve the way their drug looks. Also, drugs are only tested on thousands, and only for a short period of time... but once approved, are used in millions and many for long term. That's when we start to learn about what the drugs actually do. If the FDA had to wait for a plethora of data, we'd have no drugs approved.

Off my soapbox.

Just got back from my dentist, looks like my gums are no longer going to cause shame to my family.

Work didn't want me back, so I get an afternoon in the sewing room. Finished embroidering a haiku yesterday, so I guess I'll turn it into a pillow today.

 

[pennyJo1960]

morning still with coffee till I can play nice