Cops: Homeless patient 'dumped' on Skid Row
Moms View Message Board: The Kitchen Table (Debating Board): Cops: Homeless patient 'dumped' on Skid Row
this is in los angeles ... aint this the saddest thign in the world ?
Story Highlights• Witnesses say a hospital van left a homeless patient on Skid Row in Los Angeles
• The man was paraplegic, wore a hospital gown and had a torn colostomy bag
• Witnesses gave van's tag number to police
• Spokesman at Hollywood Presbyterian says it is investigating
Wouldn't surprise me a bit, and it's not the first time that has happened. We've had an issue here in Pennsylvania with suburban police picking up homeless people (admittedly not in hospitalization condition) and dropping them off in Philadelphia or other nearby big cities.
Problem is, probably the amount of money Medicaid would pay ran out, no nursing home would take the man, and the hospital was spending lots of money with no chance of reimbursement. This is a sort of "creative" patient discharge, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone cooked some paperwork to show that the man was being taken to his home or to some place where he would be cared for. One of the reasons we have a federal law which requires emergency rooms to treat and medically stabilize anyone who comes to an emergency room whether they are insured or not is that a lot of emergency rooms would refuse to take such patients, knowing that if the individual's medical condition required admission for hospitalization, that admission would be a money pit. And hospitals still get caught denying emergency care, or transferring someone to a city or county hospital (poor people's hospital, in other words) when they aren't really stablized and should be admitted for hospital care.
Anyone for universal health care? Yeah, I know - do you really want the government managing your health care? I'm not sure the government would be doing a worse job, from my perspective, than the insurance companies. We already have managed care - it's just a question of who's managing it.
Not surprised here either... "We already have managed care - it's just a question of who's managing it.", agreed...
I think a lot of that is that we as people (not saying everyone but many of the ones that can make a change) have no respect for the elderly, poor, and the homeless. They are seen as second class and not deserving of the same care as someone that "works hard" for their money does.
Ginny, I have another issue.. My sister is a hospice STNA. She sees no less than four patients a day. My issue is that the majority of her patients are residence of nursing homes.. Medicare, is paying for her to go into these homes and take care of patients that have full time residential care?? I am not talking assisted living, I am talking full care facilities. This makes NO sense to me. If they are in a full care facility, which means most if not all are at some stage of "death", why would they pay extra to have "special care" come in twice a week, when there are staffed STNA's that are supposed to be giving daily care to begin with? I think this is a huge waste of money and they need to make the nursing homes step up and do the jobs they are required to do to begin with. She goes in and gives baths, changes diapers, gives oral care, changes cathaders, things someone living at home would need... But the nursing homes are to be giving this care to begin with, so why the "extra" care giver?? Waste... She has no less than 10 residential patients at any given time, meaning she runs from nursing home to nursing home giving care...
Those funds could be used better some where else, IMO. It is a prime example of medicare waste... It is no wonder they keep raising the supposed cost to the seniors and disabled who are on medicare. What is it now? $98 a month on an already low income and then most are having to carry a secondary to even get proper treatment and medication. Highway robbery, if you ask me..
LOL Don't even get me started on Medicaid and the hoops you have to jump through to qualify for it... And the fact that most adults no matter what do not qualify.. Thank God for the Healthy Child programs that require the children be insured through the state if they are uninsureable through their parents...
Oh, I absolutely agree, Bobbie. A neighbor had to place her very elderly and very sick aunts in a nearby nursing home. I won't go into all the hassles and problems she and her aunts had. But, one of the aunts was diagnosed with cancer, and the nursing home had her qualified for "hospice" care. The nursing home didn't do anything different except have the doctor prescribe pain medications in larger doses, but they got paid a higher rate for hospice care, while they were doing just the same things (or not doing them, as often as not).
And now a lot of public figures are trying to frame the whole SS/Medicare/Medicaid mess in terms of a battle between the elderly and the young - that is, why should the young be paying taxes to take care of the elderly, when the elderly should have been foresighted enough to plan for their futures. Right - like a person can plan for a divorce in mid-marriage (as Annie is struggling with - and it will almost certainly bring about major changes in her family's lifestyle at some point), or the death or disabling illness of the major wage earner, or a child with serious disabilities that require expensive care that is nowhere nearly covered by insurance or government programs.
I am inclined to think that some major mistakes were made when health insurance companies, which were originally not-for-profit (the old, original Blue Cross/Blue Shield), were allowed to convert to profit-making stockholder companies, and hospitals were allowed to become for-profit. I have read calculations that the overhead costs for hospitals/medical practices, in order to jump through the various hoops private, for-profit insurance and government agencies require in order to pay them, run around 10-15%. And the overhead/management costs for private insurance companies that offer Medicare supplement policies or have Medicare HMo ("advantage") policies are anywhere from three to fie times higher than Medicare overhead/management costs. And Medicare pays a higher rate to the insurance companies for people signed up for the HMO/Advantage policies than they do for "regular" Medigap policies.
And just wait until the Medicgap insurance companies start outsourcing their help lines overseas. The building that houses my firm also houses a large 800/help line call company, and when I'm out on a cigarette break they talk of the tremendous difficulties they have in helping people who call in trying to figure out which Medicare prescription plan they should choose, and how often they are unable to provide helpful answers to the callers. Imagine if the callers were speaking with people in India, for example.
Arrgghh - I've gotten started, but I'd better stop. This rant could go on for pages and pages.
I had a response typed up that would probably have started a debate here, and if this ends up over there I will contribute.
But, in the meantime, I will just say that it is wrong to dump another human being away like that. What kind of policies are in place to try to prevent police from doing that?
Where do we want to go with this? I can see both sides, and I am frustrated by both. The only way to get health care costs down is to go to a "fee for service." That way the cost will only be what the market can bear. Also, if medical providers stopped billing insurance companies and forced the patient (who truely is the only one under contract and has any recourse) to deal with the insurance companies, alot of red tape would go away. Patients wouldn't tolerate and would shop for different insurance. Right now, for every doctor there is 1 1/2 people doing the billing. Vets provide the same medications, perform surgery have the same level of education as M.D.s. Yet their procedures cost about half that as the M.Ds. Fee for service. If you look at the quality of health care in nations that have universal health, you will see that it is significantly lower than our own. Patients have to wait months for surgery, there are no longer family doctors, it is a medical mill. What is the answer? I don't know. I know there has to be a happy middle some where. The question is who is going to be the one to find it, and not be tempted by the money that is present now?
Canadian moms - is your experience with medical care as Theresa describes?
Here's an article in the NY Times which is a followup on the dumping incident Jewlz posted about, and some indication that California's legislature is considering laws which include criminal penalties for such dumping:
Dumping
Just to interject - Hospice care is *supposed* to do more than just prescribe drugs. They are to educate the family and to help with the dying process; though their main function is end-of-life care.
Moved from Gen. Discussion.....
Carry on!
Just to interject - Hospice care is *supposed* to do more than just prescribe drugs. They are to educate the family and to help with the dying process; though their main function is end-of-life care.
I agree with Karen here. Hospice is the most wonderful organization I have ever dealth with. My grandmother died in a full time care nursing home and hospice came in for her too. They are on a whole different level than the nursing home staff.
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