California man''s health ordeal puts face on uninsured

[Louisiana1976]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Tony Andrade struggles for the words to bear the news, heart pounding and hands clammy as he grips his cell phone. Mom, don't freak out or anything, he begins. It's cancer.

Sandy Cooper's voice quavers. I'll be right there, she tells her son.

Bladder cancer. Andrade clicks off the phone and stops to absorb it, alone amid the bustle of nurses, doctors, orderlies and patients at Kaiser Permanente's south Sacramento emergency room.

The last thing he needs is more medical bills to stuff into the shoe box under his bed. The past-due notices for prior emergency room visits now swell into the tens of thousands of dollars. The phone calls from the bill collectors keep coming.

Andrade never had much money. His bank account already is depleted. Nearly four years ago, he lost his home when he could not keep up with the payments.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/79700.html?storylink=omni_popular

[usregimechange]

1. Good read, thanks

[janet118]

2. If one more Senator says the US has the "best healthcare in the world"

I will kill my television.

Take away their Cadillac insurance policies and let them drive around in the catastrophic clunkers we are stuck with. Let them deal with no coverage for pre-existing conditions, high co-pays and deductibles, and, when they don't get re-elected, let them search the "free market" for an insurance plan they can afford when they are out of work.

We have created an aristocracy who are so out of touch with middle class Americans, they think we are making these things up. They play legislative games while we struggle. They have the nerve to say, "We have the best healthcare in the . . ." <<<<<Bang!!!>>>>>

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

[Canuckistanian]

4. The solution is simple

Not easy, but still simple. Single Payer.

We've had it in Canada for nearly 50 years. In Great Britain, longer. In fact, ALL industrialized countries have at least some government PAID (not "RUN") health insurance schemes.

I'm constantly baffled by opponents to ANY government involvement in health care. It just doesn't make sense, either financially or morally.

[Cleita]

5. It does to the industries that make money from what should be health care

dollars. They are strangling the system and our corrupt government is letting them. I hope we start a grass roots movement to replace all the corporate whores in future elections and that is going to cost money. Who will be our leader to bring together grass roots campaign funds and distribute them to the primary contenders in future elections who are progressive and not burdened with having to repay corporate donors?

[Canuckistanian]

7. That's the key, isn't it?

Where do you find people like Kucinich or Bernie Sanders? Where are the leaders?

Instead, there are people like Blanche Lincoln and Max Baucus who always take the lead and get to decide for everyone else, when everyone KNOWS they're on the take from insurance companies.

A while back, someone asdked the question - are politicians corrupt by nature or are they corrupted by the system?
Sanders, Kucinich and Rep. Grayson seem to be the exception to the latter. But why aren't there more of them?

[chill_wind]

3. What has happened to ordinary people in our country is an immoral nightmare.

It doesn't have to be.

K&R

[dysfunctional press]

6. my bladder cancer was caught fairly early and wasn't a problem or expensive...

there was blood in my urine(not visible- it was picked up during a routine urine test at my dr.) i had an ivp that didn't detect anything, so i had a cystoscopy(and a vasectomy during the same procedure), and they found and removed the cancer, and it hasn't recurred.
it is a VERY freaky moment(it was for me, anyway) when the doctor actually tells you that it's cancer- it was one of those things where the room suddenly gets very big, and the other person is at the other end of it, and even their voice starts to spin.

btw- follow-up cystoscopies really suck. (a cystocopy is where they stick a camera up your pee-hole)

[chill_wind]

8. I can't stop thinking about this man

and all those just like him. Until we get real health care, I think Congress should have to read and recite aloud every day the names of each and every of the thousands Americans dead every year that heave been jerked around like this.