The U.S. Medical Education No One Discusses
Chelsea McGuire, a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, couldn’t believe what she was asked to do for her psychiatry clerkship: track down whether desperate patients have a source of income, in order for the hospital to decide whether to treat them or not. Listen to her testimony, and her plea for a single-payer system:
It is criminal that patients are treated this way.
Shame on the greed of health insurance companies.
Our country needs to get it straight and take care of our people. GREED is all it boils down to.
My mother-in-law was bi-polar. Over the 40 years that I knew her she had four major ‘episodes’ that required that she be institutionalized. These episodes were caused by a chemical imbalance in her system that caused the Lithium that she was prescribed to cease working efficiently. Each time it took several days or even a couple of weeks to get the dosage corrected, but once it was, she was right-as-rain again, and able to continue her job as secretary to the President of the company that she worked for.
It’s time we put more time and money into solving issues that can be ‘fixed’ relatively easily.
There are many issues (not only bi-polar) that require help, and the results should in no way be dependent upon the directives of an insurance company!!
It’s not just mental health or human health care patients that are treated this way. Veterinarians also do this- especially the ones owned by big corps. Since Google maps, Trulia (real estate), Facebook and other social media came to be, doctors and insurance companies will often scour these sites for any clues as to assets, personal habits like smoking or drinking, etc.. When you use your debit card at a store, a record of what you purchased is kept in some magnificent file so beware of buying too many cookies and fatty foods.
I’m in an old neighborhood that was once considered to be a very high end upscale family neighborhood. Since the financial crisis, we’ve been downgraded to a blue collar ghetto and guess what? Since Ghetto residents consume unhealthy foods, smoke and drink alcohol, collect welfare and party all day ( I’m being facetious) my insurance premiums skyrocketed- this according to my agent who tried desperately to downplay the reason. Granted it is true that my neighbors now are not as refined and educated as before but that doesn’t mean that I’m like them. Also, do you live near a highway ( pollution) or near a toxic site? What is the average income of everyone in your neighborhood? Average age. I mean it’s gotten to the point that just last year, my friend’s elderly father had to move to another neighborhood, leaving his life-long home, because he could not afford his insurance due to where he lived and who his neighbors were.
Then there is the push to screen everyone for some disease and collect everyone’s DNA because the insurance companies want to know if you have the genetic predisposition for a disease. Imagine giving your DNA to one of those ancestry banks to find out where your ancestors came from only to discover that your grand daughter now has to pay higher premiums because your DNA also showed that your mother had breast cancer ( of course they won’t tell you this is why). This behavior is unethical and immoral and it’s not good for humanity to pit everyone against each other this way.