President Obama’s Full Q & A with House Republicans

This is from earlier today.  Amazing…a State of the Union in its own right.

The Medicare Advantage

My father is a 70 year old retired New York City cab driver.  He now lives less than two miles from me in South Carolina’s upstate.  He has survived two heart attacks and a triple bypass surgery (both which occurred in his mid-forties).  He currently suffers from mild emphysema, high blood pressure, chronic leg and back pain, glaucoma, diabetes, sleep apnea, and an assortment of other problems that many 70 year old people have to deal with.  Even with his ailments, he is completely independent.  He lives alone, he drives, he takes care of his own shopping, bills, and his many monthly doctors appointments.  He is a Fox News loving ultra-conservative Catholic and I am a liberal atheist.  Boy, do we have some great debates.  When we’re not punching and counter-punching over politics and religion, we crack open a beer, grab some snacks, and enjoy America’s greatest past-time. Baseball.  Both of us were born and raised in New York.  At 11 month’s old I sat on my fathers lap and watched the Yanks win the ’78 World Series.  I’ve been hooked ever since.  I have no doubt that we are South Carolina’s biggest Yankee fans.  It’s our mutual love for baseball and the Yankees that sounded the alarm last week that something was wrong.

Last Wednesday, October 28th, the Yankees and Phillies played game one of the World Series at Yankee stadium.  Up to this point, my father and I had watched every game of the playoffs together at my house.  I spoke with him earlier that day and he told me that he didn’t feel good and was going to stay home.  He said it felt like a cold.  I asked him if he needed anything and he said no, he would see me the next day.  At this point I was mildly concerned.  My wife stopped by his house, checked his temperature, and sat with him for a bit.  She reported back that he seemed okay, he was just tired.  That put us at ease for the night.  The next day I went to work and gave him a call on my lunch break which was at one-o’clock in the afternoon.  He took a while to answer the phone and seemed confused when he finally picked up.  I asked him if he watched the game.  He said he fell asleep and asked me who won.  I understood that he was sick and it was possible that he slept through the game.  What was not comprehensible was that it was half way through the next day and he still didn’t know that the Yankees won.  I explained to my administrator that something was wrong with my father and I had to leave and check on him.  When I got to his house, he was not answering the door and I had to let myself in with my key.  What I found scared the shit out of me.  He was awake sitting on the couch.  He was trembling, breathing heavy, and he couldn’t think straight or complete a sentence.  When he tried to stand up, his legs were wobbly and he almost fell down.  I took him straight to the Emergency Room.

When we got to the ER, I had to get a wheelchair to bring him in.  The receptionist asked me for his insurance card and I gave her his Medicare card.  We waited about ten minutes before we were called back by a nurse.  She asked him some simple questions that he was unable to answer.  She took his blood pressure and was unable to get a reading.  It was that low.  The hospital staff then quickly went to work.  They hooked him up to IV’s, drew blood, and were questioning me throughly to try and figure out what was wrong.  About an hour later, when the blood work came back, they told me his Kidney’s shut down.  He was in complete Renal failure.  Hours later when they got his blood pressure stabilized, they transferred him to into the Critical Care Unit.  The doctor told me that she was surprised that he was still conscious.  She said that I shouldn’t let that fool me, and that he was fighting for his life.  I needed to get his Living Will and Medical Directive and start calling some family members.  Looking back on that, I don’t know how I didn’t break down, but I didn’t.  I stayed calm and did what I had to do.

None of that was necessary.  The doctors and nurses at St. Francis Hospital saved his life.  By Saturday, his Kidneys started to function on their own, his blood pressure was back to normal, and he wanted to watch baseball.  On Sunday, he was transferred out of CCU.  The concern now was getting his strength back.  The doctors and I decided that Physical Therapy was necessary to aid in his recovery.  The question was whether he could go home and have a therapist come in a few times a week or if he should go to a Nursing Home Facility that has a rehabilitation unit.  We all agreed that full time care was the best course of action.  This was the first time that money came up since he entered the hospital.  The hospital social worker and I looked at his coverage and found out that Medicare would cover 100% of his therapy at a Nursing Home for 20 days and 80% after that up to 100 days.  His Medicaid would pick up the difference if he needed longer than 20 days, but they predicted that he wouldn’t have to be their more than two-weeks.  We moved him into NHC yesterday (a five star nursing facility) and his therapy starts today.  He is already walking around the building on his own and is on track for a full recovery.

Government run insurance works and works well.  It was obvious in the hospital and in the nursing facility that the staff loves Medicare patients because they don’t have to worry about procedural or monetary issues.  Go figure.  Doctors and nurses want to do the jobs they were trained to do.  Saving lives and caring for patients.

Thanks to the excellent work done by the doctors and nurses at St. Francis Hospital and NHC, tonight my father and I get to watch Game 6 of the World Series together.  Thanks to Medicare, he gets to recover without the stress of how much this is all going to cost him.  That’s the way it should be.  Not just for him, but for all of us.

Southern Liberals Show Today 5:30pmET

Obama slips in his press conference. Will the Health Care agenda suffer for it? Obama vs. the police and the story of “Skip” Gates. Also today, the “birthers” are back and it’s past time to give them the Southern Liberals smack-down!! A Tour de France update as the race comes to an end this weekend. As usual we’ll also hit on Sexy Science, the Local Blog Fix, and What’s Worth Reading!! Join us in the chat room and/or call in 646-716-4363 with your questions and comments.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/filibusted

Southern Liberals Show Today 5:30pmET

The Friday News Dump. Obama meets the Pope. The G8 Summit. The healthcare battle is heating up. Will the public option fall by the way side? We’ve got a little catching up to do with the Palin/Sanford ticket. Also on tap; Where in the World is Mark Brown? The Tour de France, Sexy Science, and What’s Worth Reading. Join us in the chat room and/or call in with your questions and comments.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/filibusted

Southern Liberals-Filibusted.Net Radio Today 5:30pmET

Today on the Southern Liberals Show:

Is the right on the brink of insanity? The healthcare debate is on! North Korea, still WTF!! Do you label yourself and are labels a good thing? Is Obama giving up on bringing Gitmo inmates to the US? Also on today’s show, Sexy Science, Erotic Environment, and What’s Worth Reading? Join us in the chat room or call in with your questions and comments.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/filibusted

Southern Liberal-Filibusted.Net Radio Today 5:30pmEDT

Today on the Southern Liberals Show:  Is Pelosi a hypocrite on torture? Did Wanda Sykes go too far in last weeks Correspondents Dinner? Was Obama too funny for his own good? Why won’t Dick Cheney go away? Don’t fret, the Southern Liberals are here to answer these questions for you. We’ll be hitting on Obama’s new healthcare initiative as well. Also on tap are Erotic Environment, Sexy Science, The Local Blog Fix, and What’s Worth Reading!! Due to popular demand, our live video feed will be back. We know we’re sexy beasts!! Join us in the chat room or call in (646)716-4363 with your questions and comments.

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Filibusted.Net Show Today 5:30pmET

Today on the Filibusted.Net Show, Ryan, Mark, and Mike discuss the Bush torture memo and healthcare.  We’ll also be touching on some sexy science and our most popular segment, Erotic Environment.  Find out if Christopher Hitchen’s book god is not Great gets recommended in our What’s Worth Reading segment.  As always we’ll be kicking things off with Headlines of the Moment.  What can be better than listening to a few liberals eat pizza, drink beer, and talk shit on a Friday afternoon.  The show airs today at 5:30pmET.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/filibusted

First, Do No Harm

I recently chatted up an old friend in the medical community.  He’s doing his residency in mental health.  I’d try to make some profound analysis, but just this once, I’ll be smart enough to let the testimony stand, mostly, for itself…

To put it plainly, I’m not in a very academic environment right now.  Sure, I’m doing graduate medical education (=residency), but I am not feeling educated right now.  I basically work as a cog that makes money for my employer.  I see more than 100 patients a month, take call, go to class, work from 9-7 five days a week and also work on average 2-3 hours a night at home on other work-related stuff just so I can keep up.  I don’t feel that I can even THINK (and I mean really think) about my patients. I get up to four new patients a week, which means that the turnover is tremendous.

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I really enjoy listening to patients, but that’s what I like to do, listen to them.  I don’t know if I can “fix” anything for most of the them, and in a way, I’m okay with that fact.  But, I’m far more interested in writing about them.  I really actually hate our health system, find myself not satisfied by it, and wonder when I’m going to breathe, be treated with a little respect (and I mean just some basic respect), and manage to enjoy what I’m doing.

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I feel devalued as a member of the medical community, I find the the commodification of the health system is its greatest downfall, and openly wonder whether or not we should take a step back in this country and start over.

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And right now, where I am, sitting in a black chair everyday, becoming more cynical about people, realizing that my anger goes to no use, and continuing to feel “stuck” where I am at, I wonder how I’m going to induce change.

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Believe me.  I want to help people…from a grassroots level, wherever I can, but I want to do do it at a pace that makes me feel like I’m doing something productive and enables me to enjoy what I do.

I really don’t care about financial compensation.

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I listen to so many voices, Mark, that sometimes, I don’t even know which one is my own.  Maybe I should be in therapy myself (i.e. psychoanalysis, perhaps), but I can’t even afford it ($75/week minimum) and it would take away a minimum of an hour a week that I don’t feel I have to begin with right now.  I’ve taken to going to as many concerts and sporting events as possible as a means of just finding something outside that makes me happy.

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We need to get some intelligent people together, look at the current system of health care management, and scrap it.  We need to really look at how we treat people, how we stratify care (i.e. is bringing a drunk person to the ED a good use of our health care resources/funds, not saying that it isn’t important sometimes), and how we can effectively manage to do this in a cost-efficient, caring fashion.

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Now, most of the healthcare debate in this country, at least as far as I hear as a layman, is about coverage and paying for such.  I hear the phrase ‘quality of care’ but no real discussion of it.  Well here’s the issue laid bare from someone in the midst of it.  Is this just because he’s a resident?  Somehow I doubt it.  Instead of commentary, I have a few questions for all of you reading this:

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I have heard similar complaints many times before, so is this indicative of our entire healthcare system?

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Is this a way in which a nation can run healthcare?

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Other than reducing cost through increased patient load, how does this approach benefit anyone?

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Does this not invite errors and lower quality treatment?

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Could this not simply lead to more problems?

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Do any of the current ideas related to healthcare reform even address patient load?  

I know a few people with firsthand experience of England’s healthcare system who seem to say the waits there cause similar problems.  In fact, one individual told me that preventative care suffers because not enough medical professionals exist to treat those in need of reactionary care, and thus, symptoms grow to problems and cost everyone more.

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What do you know? What do you suggest?  What do you think?