SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: i-node who wrote (789009)6/10/2014 6:16:53 PM
From: J_F_Shepard  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578073
 
In Texarkana, Uninsured and on the Wrong Side of a State Line

TEXARKANA, Tex. — On a hazy, hot evening here, Janice Marks ate a dinner of turkey and stuffing at a homeless shelter filled with plastic cots before crossing a few blocks to the Arkansas side of town to start her night shift restocking the dairy cases at Walmart.

The next day, David Tramel and Janice McFall had a free meal of hot dogs and doughnut holes at a Salvation Army center in Arkansas before heading back to their tent, hidden in a field by the highway in Texas.

None of the three have health insurance. But had Ms. Marks, 26, chosen to sleep on the side of town where she works, or had Mr. Tramel and Ms. McFall, who are both in their early 20s, made their camp where they had eaten their dinner, their fortunes might be different.

Arkansas accepted the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act. Texas did not.

That makes Texarkana perhaps the starkest example of how President Obama’s health care law is altering the economic geography of the country. The poor living in the Arkansas half of town won access to a government benefit worth thousands of dollars annually, yet nothing changed for those on the Texas side of the state line.

nytimes.com



To: i-node who wrote (789009)6/10/2014 10:54:10 PM
From: J_F_Shepard  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578073
 
Just another story of insurance hardships without the details needed to see whether the truth is being told. This person complained that he couldn't afford his insurance and meds under his old plan and felt blessed to get an Obamacare plan that covered him. His insurance company denied his request for a name brand drug to treat his fibromyalgia, a difficult problem to diagnose and treat. Even the causes are controversial with some considering them psychological and others physical... I do know that if his physician can make the case the insurance company will pay and none of this has anything to do with Obamacare. I have personal experience with situations like this (not fibromyalgia) and know it can be done. However, I also know that the alternative drugs that are approved will do what they are supposed to do. There is no cure for fibromyalgia, just pain management. About 45% of patients are treated with habit forming opioids. Anti-depressants, anti-seizure meds, and even human growth hormone is used.....

This person is a malcontent.......going for years without coverage and paying his own bills, he gets excellent coverage but now bitches that he can't get the most expensive drugs and his doctor won't or can't make the case to justify it. He doesn't name the drug he wants....I wonder why?

"
Economics Patients with fibromyalgia generally have higher health care costs and utilization rates. A study of almost 20,000 Humana members enrolled in Medicare Advantage and commercial plans compared costs and medical utilizations and found that persons with fibromyalgia used twice as much pain-related medication as those without fibromyalgia. Furthermore, the use of medications and medical necessities increased markedly across many measures once diagnosis was made.[152] Controversies Being a disorder defined relatively recently and still not completely understood, fibromyalgia continues to be a diagnosis that sometimes is disputed. Dr. Frederick Wolfe, lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, has stated he believes the causes of Fibromyalgia "are controversial in a sense" and that "there are many factors that produce these symptoms – some are psychological and some are physical and it does exist on a continuum."[153] Some members of the medical community do not consider fibromyalgia a disease because of a lack of abnormalities on physical examination and the absence of objective diagnostic tests.[146][154] Yunus has referred to some physicians' belief that FM is psychological in nature as disturbed physician syndrome (DPS): "It is the physicians who are psychologically disturbed because they ignore the data, and whatever data there is, they manipulate it to say what they want it to say."[155]
en.wikipedia.org