After my mother fell and broke her arm, she ended up in the hospital. Medicare covered five days in the hospital and three weeks of rehab. Then the insurance troubles began.
The Healthcare System is Demented
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
7 Comments. Leave new
Die sooner and more painfully….
Indeed. Which demonstrates once again – if demonstration be needed – that the conflict is not between generations (which those running things are perfectly happy with having the proles believe), but between the super rich and the rest of us. When it comes to this issue, Mr Sanders has nailed it….
Henri
All part of the scheme. End of life expenses are one of the key points to tap the revenue stream. College tuition in another. Home ownership ( the one where you can actually come out significantly ahead, but not any more as homes are unaffordable) is a third. Don’t forget weddings–another huge money burn–and cars (because public transport is unusable for most places) and so on.
Who comes out ahead? The people with enough money to corner the markets and hire lobbyists to keep the gravy train going.
And do we stop it? Hillary Clinton, the semi-retired war criminal, built a fortune peddling influence via the Clinton Foundation. People still think she was robbed of the election, despite her and the DNC stealing the primary process. She still has people cheering her $12/hr is good enough bullshit. Trump says he’ll take dirt from foreign powers and everyone shrieks how illegal that is. Clinton PAID for a now discredited dossier from a foreigner about Trump and everyone looks the other way. The silence is almost as deafening as how everyone ignores what the LATimes is doing to Ted.
Those in charge don’t care, just as long as they keep getting the best of everything, especially by swiping it from the 99%.
This may seem off topic at a first look, but the assholes in charge are trying to drum up a new (undeclared and unconstitutional) war with Iran to justify their $2,000,000,000 per day military offenses in the name of Defense.
As soon as a member of the House of Representatives goes the Washington their loyalty, for the most part, is switched to the US oligarchs.
A repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment would replace the State legislatures to where they started originally, as mediators between the taxpaying citizens of each State and the non-representative Representatives in Washington.
I’d love to see the Representatives in Washington have to negotiate with each of the 50 legislatures and be accountable for tax allocation both to the US Congress and from the people of their States.
For a system that calls itself democratic, it’s a crime that the people of the wealthiest nation on earth have to be stripped of their wealth to provide overpriced health care, education, and infrastructure inferior to most modern industrialized nations.
Maybe if you publish a graphic memoir of your experiences you will be interviewed on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air(like Roz Chast). Not sure if this can lead to reform, but you never know. I’m sorry you have to go through this.
In a comment to the New York Times on a recent article detailing how paid paternal leave here in Sweden greatly reduces maternal stress, I noted that the budgeted cost of parental leave in 2018 amounted to some 59 % of the sum devoted to defence and preparation for emergencies and further :
I suggest that even care of the elderly could be included herein, with money left over….
Henri
… and said money left over could be used to issue a pony to every resident, plus a package of 40 social media channels to share its antics.
(Slightly updating the quaint notion of 40 acres and a mule).
This would further reduce stress, and promote peace and organic farming.
“Insurance company says rehab won’t work cuz of her dementia… she’ll forget it all…”
This is just callous.
At the most basic level, rehab is done to people in a coma, passively moving their limbs to promote function, with absolutely no participation necessary.
Even late stage Alzheimer patients who struggle with their own name will still be remarkably good at procedural memory. I take it we’re talking movement therapy, not memorizing vocabulary lists. Occupational therapy aimed at bringing a patient back into their familiar environments and activities is probably the best thing one can do to promote cognitive function in such cases.
At worst this might be a bit challenging to a patient, but even that in a good way.
What they’re really saying is just a version of “why bother, she isn’t worth it, not enough good years left in her”.
That and “why should we pay the money our members contribute into the insurance fund back out to them when we could instead divert it to pay for whisky and hookers?”
Callous.