Re: How do you do it? (Cost of healthcare)/ pat

[Guest guest]

Pat-It is terrible here in the states! My son works full time and has no insurance and doesn't make enough to pay for the doctor bill for an office visit which is $120 for a first visit and he has high blood pressure and no medication. It is a travesty!

We have a tiered system here. First, are those that hae good health insurance..Ie i have Medicare and a Blue Cross supplement which is paid for by the State of California and with it comes insurance for medicine. Vision is covered under the Blue Cross. The state of California also gives me dental for free but the coverabe is worthless. I pay almost a hundred dollars a month in a premium out of my social security check for my medicare. it is not free! That is $1200 A YEAR. If you don't have a secondary insurance it is like a thousand dollars each time you go into the hospital and there are other co-pays with medicare.

Next are those with good private health care.

Then there are the working individuals without insurance. If they make under a certain amount per month their children may be eligible for health insurance from the state which is a federal program and it is under medicaid. But if the parents get sick....if they have a free clinic in their town they can go there. Have nothing to say bad about free clinics. In the 60's I had to use them in LA CA and I had very good care. They found and treated me for arthritis. And, if you need hospitalization they will send you to a county hospital. Now a county hospital can be good or neutral or bad...depends ...it is a teaching hospital usually but not necessarily. It is funded by the county within a state and that is where the uninsured go. They still bill you and used to be if you had a home they put alien on your house so if you ever sold it they would be paid from the selling of your house first.

Then there are those that qualify for Medicaid.....called by different names in each state. There are different eligibilty catagories in each state....Medicaid is a federal/state program for those eligable poor. They cover medical bills but how and what differs from state to state. I was on medicaid in AZ and it did not cover dental or psychiatry. It did not even cover psychiatric medicines. medicaid usually covers medicine too. So no mental health and no mental health medicines. They provided a county system for that service. The other thing is you can't find a doctor that will take it. At least here in Prescott if you are an adult you can't find a doctor to take yo0u unless you are a kid. In CA the problem also is it pays so little doctors won't see you so you either get newdoctors who need patients badly or have no doctor but can go to the ER or you get a bad doctor...and the specialists like pulmonologists don't want to take you either because of the low pay on medicaid. So though on paper the disabled and the other catagories accepted under medicaid look good it is not good. It is a very bad system.

Joyce R AZ birds