DISREGARD THIS
AT YOUR PERIL
In case you missed this NBC news video January 9, you may want to watch it. We all need to be aware of what is written on the hospital admission form or it could cost us a lot of money we may be unprepared to pay. Do take time to contact your Congresscreature, if you have a concern.
Two Little Words
"UNDER OBSERVATION"
Can Ruin You Financially
Whether you are the Medicare recipient or your older family relative is, this is something of which you must be aware BEFORE a trip to the hospital. Saw it last evening on NBC Nightly News and was shocked. Never heard of this before and you probably have not either.
Please forward this to as many folks as possible. And contact your senators and representatives
about much-needed changes to the regulations.
CLICK, WATCH, WEEP, then ACT.
Very important information, FT!
ReplyDeleteThis under-observation-but-not-admitted travesty happened to my aunt TWICE back in 2010. She had one whopper of a bill -- a bill not picked up by Medicare or her Medigap insurance. When my aunt went to the hospital ER for the 3rd time in 3 weeks, she was finally officially admitted. Diagnosis: pancreatic cancer.
Even if my aunt had been diagnosed earlier, she'd have died within the same time frame. However, perhaps official admission and an earlier diagnosis would have resulted in less suffering for her because palliative care could have been begun sooner.
PS: I've nabbed the video for a future blog post.
ReplyDeleteGood morning, AOW! I couldn't find a way to post the video, itself, because it didn't come from YouTube but via email, instead.
ReplyDelete______________________
At the risk of sounding callous I have to say at the rate things are going once one reaches a certain stage of disability one might be better off dead.
They can't come after you for any more MONEY Once you've shuffled off the coil.
After your heirs have paid the vastly expanded death Tax, that is.
ReplyDeleteVastly expanded? Huh?
ReplyDeleteThe deductible was expanded to several million.
Why so upset about "for observation"? Can't cut it in the free market(LMAO)? Need the nanny state?
All of this happened BECAUSE of the Nanny State, Canardino. Business of ALL kinds has had to take REFUGE from unceasing Government Incursion, which accomplishes NOTHING but ever-increasing costs, diminished quality of service, and less availability of needed services.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't see that, you are blinded by Idiotarian ideology -- as virtually ALL people who consider themselves "well-educated" are today, Alack and Alas!
I too would likely have been a crypto-Marxist, had I gone to Prinstein U., as my parents desired, instead of to the conservatory to study classical music, as I thankfully did.
Art is far, far, FAR above politics. If Art becomes political, it ceases to BE "Art," and becomes PROPAGANDA, instead.
As for "expanded to several million," you so easily -- and unwisely -- overlook INFLATION'S devastating power to reduce drastically the PURCHASING POWER of our CURRENCY.
ReplyDeleteAnd that, my dear Canardo, is why the tax on estates and long-term Capital Gains is so desperately unfair -- and moronically hostile to the accumulation of personal wealth -- THE most desirable goal for ANY sensible person, which of course could never include MARXISTS such as yourself.
@ Ducky Canardo: Can't cut it in the free market(LMAO)?
ReplyDeleteFor once, your LMAO tag fits. When discussing health care in the US, there is no free market.
The government controls it and owns it. There's nothing free about it, but I wouldn't expect a progressives statist to understand that
In my aunt's case, her heir didn't have to pay. My aunt had sufficient savings to pay the medical bills.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the debts for medical bills can be filed against an estate. Of course, if the estate doesn't have the funds, the medical provider doesn't get to collect.
In the case of a spouse as heir, the medical provider can attach the spouse's assets -- regardless of the origin of those assets. So, the spouse could lose his or her home!
Well, AOW, medical care has never been CHEAP in any economy, but then why SHOULD it be? If green peppers can now cost a buck EACH, workers in the auto industry can be paid $75.00 an HOUR -- PLUS "BENEFITS" -- for their limited skills, plumbers, carpenters and electricians, etc, can charge $125.00 an HOUR, and the cheapest new cars can cost upwards of TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND dollars and MORE, why in GOD's name shouldn't highly skilled medics be paid sufficiently for THEIR enormous contribution to human welfare?
ReplyDeleteDumboCrats never seem to mind paying ever higher TAXES for highly dubious government 'services," so how DARE they object to medical personnel being properly rewarded for their efforts?
Why should ANYONE expect to get ANYTHING for NOTHING -- EVER?
FT,
ReplyDeleteOh, don't get me wrong! I've never advocated that medical care should be free.
But manipulating a patient's status so that health insurance can avoid paying a bill that the medical insurance has contracted for seems like a weasel move. To me, anyway.
When someone is truly ill, that someone needs an advocate to read all the fine print. Unfortunately, some who are ill do not have such an advocate. Otherwise, something terrible can happen. For example, one of my wealthy cousins had no advocate; as a result, she ended up in a nursing home that allowed her to sit in her own filth and also deprived her of two meals a day. This was so obscene because my cousin had the funds to pay for whatever end-of-life care needed. A neighbor of my cousin's brought in an attorney and turned things around.
We certainly agree on that, AOW. I thought that was the whole point of the post.
ReplyDeleteDeception STINKS, whether it cokes from government OR the private sector.
The picture you used is from one of my all time favorite games: Fallout 3.
ReplyDeleteOff topic but you might enjoy this,FT
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ducky. I enjoyed Mr. Stauffer's review of Gardiner's new Bach biography very much, although frankly I think it tells us more about John Eliot Gardiner and possibly the reviewer than it does about Bach, himself.
ReplyDeleteI found the following paragraph provocative:
”Unlike Mozart, Beethoven, and other classical composers for whom personal letters abound, Bach left behind little correspondence. He never wrote an autobiographical sketch, even though he was invited to do so several times, and in only three instances—a job inquiry to an old school chum, a concerned exchange with town officials over the misdemeanors of his son Johann Gottfried Bernhard, and underlinings and marginalia in his Calov Bible—does he offer a glimpse of his inner self. All the rest must be pieced together from council records, pay receipts, anecdotes, brief printed notices, a carefully worded obituary, and other scraps of information. Bach’s character has remained largely hidden from view.”
Fortunately I was saved later on in the review from saying that I thought Bach's character, and the meaning of his life is revealed brilliantly, dramatically, copiously and very clearly in the immense body of work he left us.
This too struck me a bit funny:
Luther’s earthy German translation of the Bible, a “prose of the people,” provided Bach with bold images to paint in music.
The collection of carefully selected ancient documents we knows as "The Bible" by its very nature IS incredibly "earthy" -- especially the Old Testament. I cannot read Hebrew, Aramaic or ancient Greek, but the blood and guts -- the passion and prejudice inherent in the rivalry and brutal conflict among ancient ethnic groups -- is amply illustrated in ALL the seven or eight English versions of the Book I've looked into with some care.
Too much to comment upon here, but I greatly favor the following:
As Otto Bettmann once remarked, Bach’s “music sets in order what life cannot.”
One not-so-little bone to pick with the reviewer, who claims early on that the complete organ worlds of J.S. Bach were never recorded until recently. Not true. The astonishing French organiste Marie Claire Alain recorded the COMPLETE ouevre not once but THREE times in her long career.
All that aside, the idea of Bach's ever having been a "thug," is simply absurd. He had an earthy side to be sure -- he fathered at least TWENTY children after all! -- but the fact remains that he was always much too BUSY ever to have had time for-if-any nonsense.
Some of Mr. Gardiner's wilder conjectures strike me as conjured up primarily to capture the ATTENTION of a wider audience in this damnably Debunking Age. After all, as we've learned much to our sorrow, SEX, SIN and CHICANERY SELL. Virtue, Alas! is too often ignored or targeted for abuse.
Also, I thought it a bit churlish at least not t acknowledge the great contribution of Albert Schweitzer as a Bach scholar.
Thanks again, Ducky. Very stimulating.