Fighting Cancer: Money Matters More Than Medicine

I wasn’t sure when I’d write again about Mom’s cancer battle, but today’s fiasco has inspired me. And I’m definitely not inspired in a good way. To put it bluntly, it was made more than obvious to us that in the eyes of Medicare money matters more than medicine.

Mom’s been undergoing chemotherapy since August, and according to the doctor and oncology nurses she’s been doing quite well on the drugs they’ve been infusing her with. While no one can honestly say that she’s out of the woods yet, she’s been making good progress and her doctor had scheduled her for more chemo sessions and another body scan in a couple of weeks. You can imagine our surprise then when we walked into the office for her weekly chemo session and the young office manager was forced to inform us, “Sorry, we can’t treat you today. Medicare says you can’t have any more chemotherapy.”

Of course they’ll fax in documents and medical notes and what-not to the paper-pushers at Medicare, but who’s to say that Medicare won’t take their sweet ol’ time deciding if additional chemo sessions are worth it? What’s six months to a career bureaucrat? It’s a water cooler break! But what’s six months to a cancer patient not getting treatment? I guess Medicare doesn’t shed any crocodile tears if the patient isn’t alive when they finally make their decision.

Mom is fortunate that she has supplemental private health insurance, but for some reason it won’t pay its 20% unless Medicare pays its portion first, and if Medicare isn’t paying… Then of course that means they don’t pay, either. I can’t figure that out—you pay expensive premiums for insurance that doesn’t pay when you need it? Sounds like something from a classic Monty Python sketch, “The auto insurance that only works if you don’t use it” sketch. It seems at this point if Mom wants to continue to get better and receive chemo treatments, she’ll have to pay out of pocket. Unfortunately, our last name isn’t “Gates”, so she doesn’t have an endless bank account.

I know Mom’s case isn’t unique. I’m certain that every day thousands—maybe millions—of Americans are told that they are no longer worthy of receiving life-saving medications or medical treatments. It seems to me our government has found a rather unique way to cull the “surplus population” (as Ebenezer Scrooge labeled them in Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol). The U.S. may not force you into having abortions and sterilization procedures like the Chinese do to prevent population growth, but instead it waits until you’re retirement age and then it lets you waste away from lack of healthcare. It allows you to labor as the working poor without any health benefits with the freedom of keeling over in your tracks if you happen to get sick. How kind.

I saw an “Occupy Findlay, Ohio” group camped out in front of the Hancock County Courthouse this morning. It seems even in small town America people have had enough of an uncaring government and want to make their voices heard. Maybe Mom and I should join them?

 

Please feel free to share your experiences with Medicare, unresponsive health insurers, and other injustices the 99% of us endure on a daily basis in the comments section below.

Please pass this blog/link along to others who feel put upon similarly. If we create enough noise, perhaps someone somewhere in a position of power will grant us justice.

In any case, even if we’re not here to see the results of the revolution, perhaps we can help start it.

Feel free to join our Facebook page, The Mad-As-Hell Party. Let the politicos know we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!