Gary Null
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 There are further questions surrounding the availability of this expensive technology to those without the means or the medical insurance. Unfortunately, these treatments are quite expensive. From the moment you walk into a specialist's office asking for an evaluation, you start incurring costs in the hundreds of dollars for examinations and tests, all the way to thousands of dollars for the in vitro techniques. It's about $10,000 per cycle for a straight in vitro lab procedure, all the way up to $15,000 if egg donor in vitro fertilization is utilized. |
Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.
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 Like most people with medical insurance through an employer, Anne's health care included medication coverage. By contrast, many student health plans, like Harvard's, do not cover medication.
"I can't afford this," said Anne. "I'm living on a student budget. Frankly, I couldn't have afforded it on my old job. But look at me. I desperately need it."
"When did you lower the dose?"
"Two days ago."
"Have you had any dizziness?"
"Not when I'm sitting still like this, but if I got up and moved around I would."
"What if you just turn your head?"
Anne turned slowly from left to right. |
| While managed care policies have cut the value of general medical insurance benefits by 7.4%, mental health benefits have been cut much more drastically in half.73
Dora was in her late sixties when she first consulted me for a second opinion about her treatment. Two years earlier, she had retired from being a schoolteacher. At first she enjoyed her newfound freedom, especially the extra time she had to spend with her grandchildren. But as the fall and winter wore on, she began to miss her work and to feel that she had too much time on her hands. Eventually she became mildly depressed. |
Mark Bricklin
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 Unfortunately, he adds, the medical insurance companies have been dragging their heels on the issue. Not only do they refuse to pay for bedsores until they are difficult to bring under control, but they haven't supported the use of special surfaces to prevent bedsores in the first place.
A common method of preventing and relieving bedsores in hospitals has been to regularly turn the patient so that he or she is not left lying too long in the same position. Water beds, however, work in much the same manner, only much more effectively, by distributing body weight to avoid pressure points. |
Martin L. Cross
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 The Lure of Lower Premiums
"We have seven employees and a total of ten, including dependents who need medical insurance," says the business manager of a literary agency. "We had excellent private insurance with Blue Cross/Blue Shield and a major medical policy with Phoenix. They didn't question the medical care our people received, and they paid promptly. We had that insurance through 1997, but we were getting regular raises of about ten percent per year. The premiums had finally risen to $55,000 a year and we decided we could no longer afford it. |
Cynthia A. Foster, M.D.
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 Since the insurance pays for it, everyone who pays medical insurance premiums pays for it. What for - so the baby can live for a few more years in and out of a hospital, sick and with a horrible quality of life?
At first glance, we tend to think these surgeries are so wonderful and miraculous, and we do not see them for the horrors that they really can be. We see on the news more brainwashing about how a transplant is such a breakthrough and so important for saving people's lives. We forget to ask, "What are their lives like after the transplant? |
| Ironically, that same day, the approval for my medical insurance came in the mail, meaning I would have been covered for the visit anyway.
The doubts came up - would I live or die? I was so terrified I couldn't handle it anymore. I prayed again - Will I never be well again? And lying there on the floor in front of the door of my apartment where I had collapsed after coming home from school, I lost consciousness on top of my Bible. God was the only thing I could hang onto. It was the middle of the afternoon. |
John Lauritsen
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 For example, in the brochure just mentioned, the authors offer the following suggestion, along with breathing exercises and getting medical insurance: "Reduce your alcohol, drug and tobacco intake.
Considering that millions of people have successfully given up cigarettes completely, it is perverse and harmful to say, "reduce tobacco intake". If an ex-smoker has really been addicted to cigarettes — and nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known — a single puff will suffice to get him back to a two-packs-per-day habit. |
E. Richard Brown
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 In 1916 the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), an alliance of Progressive businessmen and reformers and nonsocialist labor leaders, introduced its model compulsory medical insurance bill into several state legislatures. Although some Progressive AMA officials supported the bill, the proposal was crushed by private practitioners who organized within and outside the AMA to defeat this "attack"12 and by the conservatism and political repression that swept the country following America's entry into the war. |
Jane M. Orient, M.D.
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 In fact, most individuals and family medical insurance policies sold in the 1950s were guaranteed renewable.9 If people found out that such policies were available (and were allowed to buy them), who would ever knowingly buy any other type?
However, there are two very bad ideas now being promoted: community rating and mandatory insurance with defined benefits (many of which you may not need or want).
"Community rating" means that everybody has to be charged the same premium, regardless of the difference in risk. |
Rhonda D. Orin
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 This patient has a rareform of medical insurance."
The New Yorker Collection 1994 Frank Corham from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
The reason is a concept called "family deductibles." Typically there is an individual deductible for every person in a family. That person must meet that deductible every year before reimbursement commences. Then there is also a family deductible. The family deductible sets a maximum, communal deductible per family per year. If certain members of the family go to doctors frequently, they can max out the deductible for the entire family. |
| In Vitro Fertilization
(a) This section applies to:
(1) each individual hospital or major medical insurance policy of an insurer that:
(1) 1. is delivered or issued for delivery in the State; or 2. covers individuals who reside and work in the State; or
(ii) is written on an expense-incurred basis;
(2) each group or blanket health insurance policy of an insurer that:
(i) 1. is issued or delivered in the State; or 2. |
Robert W. Hill, Ph.D. and Eduardo Castro, M.D.
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 And how many people can afford a comprehensive medical and psychological evaluation? medical insurance companies will not foot those bills. Parents who inform themselves
It is the unbridled use of Ritalin in an attempt to treat virtually any and all behavioral or academic child will not be merely treated with the knee-jerk response of a prescription for Ritalin. Rather, the parents will choose safer, more natural treatments, such as neurofeedback. better and safer treatment interventions, that we protest.
Let's address the question of how children get put on Ritalin in the first place. |
Attaining Medical Self SufficiencyDuncan Long
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| Depending on the medical insurance plan he's working for, he might even be removed from his position as primary care giver, not have referrals made to him if he's a specialist, or be eliminated from the HMO system. He may have to pay a fine, out of pocket, to stay in the HMO system. All this means you might be able to convince him to write a prescription for a medication that is not on, or has been removed from the formularies list.
-
186 Susan Headden, "The big pill push," US News, September 1, 1997.
187 Ibid.
But don't bank on it. |
| Most people think that if they have medical insurance footing the bills, there's no need to worry about the expense of a hospital stay. But this isn't a good way of conducting business for the simple reason that many insurance plans, when the fine print is read, have an upper limit of what will be covered. This limit is high — often hundreds of dollars or even a million bucks. But it also isn't hard to run up such bills should there be a complication or if another family member becomes ill during the period the policy uses to figure the total costs. |
| The catch to specialized hospitals is that they may be more expensive (possibly with some expenses not being covered by medical insurance), will often require travel to reach, and, should complications arise outside the area of expertise, may be unable to adequately treat them. For this reason you should give some careful thought about whether a specialized hospital is for you.
Teaching Hospitals
Teaching hospitals (sometimes known as "community hospitals") act as training grounds for physicians and other health professionals. |
| Don't sacrifice yourself to the medical insurance company's bottom line.
One Plus
The big plus of the primary care system is that its goal toward decreasing the costs makes preventative medicine more attractive to the system — and thus to the primary care doctor as well. That means if you go into an office with a problem, rather than just dispense some pills and send you on your way, your doctor will be more than happy to discuss ways to keep the problem from occurring again.
You need to be sure to take advantage of this situation by always asking questions. |
| Chapter 2:
Finding A Good Doctor
Up until the medical insurance companies pressured Woodward/White, Inc., to quit publishing the books, one could purchase The Best Doctors in America (by authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith) and, in theory at least, discover which physicians in your area were most likely the best available. Unfortunately the powers-that-be in the medical industry didn't like letting people have such information — soon the best-selling books went out of print.
The Best Doctors in America was published in a national edition and in five regional editions. |
Cynthia A. Foster, M.D.
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| One doctor actually screamed at me because I told him I was waiting to be approved for medical insurance, and he practically booted me out of his office. He never even asked me, but at that time, I could've paid out-of-pocket anyway. He wasn't interested in listening. He was too busy on the phone discussing the details of his new, very expensive car. This same doctor insisted on ordering a pregnancy test, even though I told him that there was 0% chance of this, considering I was celibate at the time. |
Elaine Feuer
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 Fifty million Americans have inadequate medical insurance and 37 million are without coverage entirely. A 1992 University of Arkansas research study showed that one-half to two-thirds of hospitalized or institutionalized elderly Americans are malnourished. Of the 30 million over age sixty-five, 1 million are malnourished and 6 million are at high risk of malnutrition. The elderly are often forced to choose between food and medicine; medicine usually wins out. And the situation can only get worse. The over sixty-five population is expected to rise to an estimated 52 million by the year 2022. |
Larry Trivieri, Jr.
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 She notes, however, that c-sections are sometimes performed for other reasons than the well-being of the mother or fetus, such as avoidance of patient pain, convenience factors, and legal concerns of the hospital or physician ("defensive medicine"), and that cesarean rates are also higher for women who have private medical insurance and for women who are private, rather than public, clinic patients.
"Compared with vaginal birth, c-sections tend to cause greater pain and debility, sometimes for months," Allen says. |
Dr. Gary Null
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 There are further questions surrounding the availability of this expensive technology to those without the means or the medical insurance. Unfortunately, these treatments are quite expensive. From the moment you walk into a specialist's office asking for an evaluation, you start incurring costs in the hundreds of dollars for examinations and tests, all the way to thousands of dollars for the in vitro techniques. It's about $10,000 per cycle for a straight in vitro lab procedure, all the way up to $15,000 if egg donor in vitro fertilization is utilized. |
Stephen Fried
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 When I spoke to them or read their work, I was reminded that much of my research on drugs had concerned the problems of people like myself, patients in industrialized countries with medical insurance or decent public health programs. But there is, of course, a whole other drug world out there. It's a world of starving babies and impoverished adults whose beleaguered doctors take it for granted that the wealthiest quarter of the planet's population will get nearly 80 percent of all the medicine. |
Larry Trivieri, Jr.
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| If you get cancer, your medical insurance or Medicare will pay thousands of dollars for surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy—whatever is the standard of practice for your particular kind of cancer. This in spite of the fact that after spending more than $2 billion annually for research over the last quarter century, the incidence and mortality for most kinds of cancer remain unchanged or continue to rise. |
| One of the questions I am asked most frequently has nothing to do with how to treat any one particular health condition—it is how to get medical insurance to cover alternative therapies.
Every day I learn about exciting advances in alternative medicine and hear inspiring stories of patients who have been cured of diseases conventional medicine calls "incurable." But what good are these medical miracles if people do not have the money to pay for them? |
Earl Mindell
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 With the price of medical insurance rising daily, paying attention to your nutritional warning system is about the best and cheapest insurance around. Here are a few common symptoms that you might be ignoring—and shouldn't. Where I've written "Are You Eating Enough?" I'm not implying that you should be downing huge portions of these foods, just suggesting that their absence in your diet could be a good reason to use supplements.
The supplements recommended are not intended as medical advice, only as a guide in working with your doctor. |
Michael Lerner
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 The diagnosis sharpened her awareness of how wrong her current position was for her, but her medical insurance and income seemed critical to her survival. She was caught in a job she believed was contributing to her illness.
Then there are work-related problems that result from physical or psychological changes that make it difficult for the cancer patient to continue to do the work that he enjoys—and sometimes the work on which his livelihood depends. Even if the financial situation is workable, the loss of capacity to function in a satisfying way—to be needed and useful—can be a great loss. |
| Some people are unfairly dismissed from jobs because of cancer and cannot find new positions or medical insurance because of the disease. Some are kept in their jobs but denied promotions or new opportunities in the organization. Still others find the primary problem is the reaction of co-workers to their illness—a reaction that they cannot escape in the work context. |
| The existence of the underclass reflects American social policies that are startlingly less supportive of its citizens than those of any of the other industrial democracies. In medical insurance, in education, in pregnancy benefits and leave, in job training or retraining, in housing, and in virtually every other field except higher education, the United States does less to take care of its citizens than any other advanced industrial democracy. |
Kenny Ausubel
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 His stand against national medical insurance, which he variously called "Communism," "Nazism," and "Socialism," was courting widespread public and professional insurrection.41
Dr. Fishbein's AMA was already under pressure from a stunning 1937 court conviction of "conspiracy" for restraint of trade and monopolistic practices, a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943.42 The AMA
MORRIS A. BEAUX Editor of "PLAIN TALK" Exposes Organized Medicine's Extortion, Monopolies and Suppressive Tatties In Sensational Bonk
Dr. Fishbein comes under ?nounting attack, c. 1948. |
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