I gotta get the Shingles one (two,actually). Just need to decide which day or two afterwards that I want to feel like shit (especially after the second one).
OT: The OT Thread: At least it's not cold out (Warning in post 368)
- Thread starter Jim Bob
- Start date
RabidBadger
Mazur detractors will look like dummies!
Trust me, the effects from the vaccine will be 100x more pleasant than getting shingles. I had it on my face. The best way to describe it is someone pressed a hot iron to my face and left it there. Getting my kidney removed was way easier to deal with than shingles. Well, that's enough over sharing for now.
Got them, a couple of years ago, and didn't have any issues afterwards. At least, nothing that stood out beyond the normal shite.
sabremike
Stand Tall For Giraffes!!!
Hello tennis elbow. I've never had you before.
Talked to the doctor today. He told me to rest it for three weeks. I said "so no Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tonight then?"
Luckily he reckons my office work is a bigger stressor and said it probably would not make much difference going to training. So I went anyway.
It's hard giving up time for recovery, and it's only gonna get shitter the older I get. I guess eventually I have to listen to the doctors.
Talked to the doctor today. He told me to rest it for three weeks. I said "so no Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tonight then?"
Luckily he reckons my office work is a bigger stressor and said it probably would not make much difference going to training. So I went anyway.
It's hard giving up time for recovery, and it's only gonna get shitter the older I get. I guess eventually I have to listen to the doctors.
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sabremike
Stand Tall For Giraffes!!!
speaking of things with recovery, my father decided to flying tackle a display at a local grocery store where he and my mom live. Spiral fracture in his arm and dislocated shoulder. He’s going in for surgery hopefully on Thursday. It’s been real motivating for me to try and get things physically set to rights watching him struggle and knowing there’s no way I could afford to do the things that he’s done in retirement to his body. He had a hip replaced, he’s had a shoulder reconstructed, he’s got a replacement valve in his heart. I can’t even afford to get vaccinated…
Medical care is an interesting topic.
My observation from the outside of the US, and happy to be corrected - having a privatized system ensures you get highly paid medical professionals (meaning they are hopefully good at what they do). You also get money into medical research for new drugs and state of the art diagnostic equipment ... but in the end it's subsidizing benefits that only the roch can afford to make use of?
Question: if you go into a hospital for something? How long would you expect to wait to be seen?
Beerz
Registered User
- Jun 28, 2011
- 35,328
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Most people get their insurance through their place of employment.
You talking like an emergency room visit? .. I guess it depends how serious the issue is... if it is not too serious you can wait a couple hours or more to get in. Maybe more in big cities.
Mike McDermott
blah blah blah
The American healthcare system is severely broken. I won’t go on too much of a tangent here but you pay a lot to have insurance, pay more when you need to use it and insurance often declines things that doctors says patients need. It is all about profit and the little guy gets ****ed. There are certainly good doctors who do they best they can but the bureaucracy of it all is a mess.
Seriousness definitely comes into play but I’ve known some people lately that waited 8-12 hours. With as mentioned above it being all about profit, Emergency Rooms are often under staffed and overworked.
54% get private health insurance from employers. Anyone else is covered through other means (32-ish percent) or doesn’t have any at all (8ish percent).
It would cost about the same amount for me to get those vaccines in Costa Rica, and that includes renewing my passport, getting a round-trip flight, and booking for a couple of days.
Beerz
Registered User
- Jun 28, 2011
- 35,328
- 16,725
I was just wondering what the comparison is like in a user-pays system. I took my son into the hospital for a concussion last week. It was about 6-7 hours beginning to end ... which is probably about average here, or maybe even a little on the faster side. That's public healthcare. I also get private Healthcare through work but that only covers serious treatment like cancer/surgery.
Accidents here are covered by public Healthcare. Urgent you'll be straight into the hospital and dealt with. Non-urgent you might sit there for half a day. No cost though.
I've been covered by a private company considered good, briefly by the university with a state plan, briefly by the state for a couple of months after I graduated, and then nothing.
I have seen no difference in speed of care. Cost? Massive differences. I paid far, far less as an uninsured tourist for things in CR that were on par as US treatment. I also can't see my GP without a direct complaint - no maintenance annuals. So that'll probably kill me when I finally do get back on a carrier because it will be a late find.
The fascinating stuff is that the companies are denying services which is essentially practicing without without a license. But it's a massive industry with a huge fund raising and lobbying presence in the US, which means things don't get changed for the better.
The malpractice insurance and litigious nature of America also adds up.
I would also point out that back when I had private employer Insurance that was considered good, my now exwife had an injury that put us into bankruptcy as a household. That one major illness/injury away from ruin? Been there.
Yet, the cost of insurance from the client to the practitioner is different and discrete from the cost of insurance from the practitioner for them to deal with malpractice cases. The US pushes more testing (and keeps the cost of that testing) prohibitively high as a gateway protection for possible malpractice claims.
For profit hospitals and practitioner have an impact - the rates for all care at those is higher than at NFP locations. The lack of regulation on medical costs (particularly medications) compared to other industrialized nations is a major factor - the US lets pharma charge a bundle for things that are essential for the patient's life. Both layers lead to major cost increases vs. other countries charges. Massive administrative costs as executives earn massive salaries in private insurance companies is one of those expenses. Then there is the systemic fraud - the overbilling in Medicare advantage that was being dug into prior to the change in administration, where the private insurance companies providing the feds with services willingly over-billed by something like $19B USD.
But prying the for-profit side of this out to reset everything is going to be one of those cold dead hands things. Too many big donors are too invested in making too much money off folks living in the US to get anything to change. Call me a cynic but it is too much money flowing to see it change for the population at large any time soon.
Yet, the cost of insurance from the client to the practitioner is different and discrete from the cost of insurance from the practitioner for them to deal with malpractice cases. The US pushes more testing (and keeps the cost of that testing) prohibitively high as a gateway protection for possible malpractice claims.
For profit hospitals and practitioner have an impact - the rates for all care at those is higher than at NFP locations. The lack of regulation on medical costs (particularly medications) compared to other industrialized nations is a major factor - the US lets pharma charge a bundle for things that are essential for the patient's life. Both layers lead to major cost increases vs. other countries charges. Massive administrative costs as executives earn massive salaries in private insurance companies is one of those expenses. Then there is the systemic fraud - the overbilling in Medicare advantage that was being dug into prior to the change in administration, where the private insurance companies providing the feds with services willingly over-billed by something like $19B USD.
But prying the for-profit side of this out to reset everything is going to be one of those cold dead hands things. Too many big donors are too invested in making too much money off folks living in the US to get anything to change. Call me a cynic but it is too much money flowing to see it change for the population at large any time soon.
Imagine the uproar if you did what we do ... here you can't sue for personal injury. No legal avenue or precedent to do it. We seem to be the only country that does it but it works well. Albeit I haven't had to get compensation for an injury, but I've been fixed a tonne of times for free.
It does seem like there is a whole industry around that that is such a waste of money, time, productivity. Just stop doing it?
Stopping doing it means someone is losing out on taking billion of dollars from people. There is no policy will to do so by legislatures.
