Share Your Experience: Public Use File
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Question We all have different experiences getting health insurance or in seeking health care. Sometimes these are good experiences, while other times they are not. We may meet very special providers or encounter new and innovative practices. Other times the American health care system disappoints us. Please tell us what has worked well or hasn't worked well for you or your family. Response State Date/time received With the vast number of health care dollars going towards chronic health WA 2/16/2006 7:37:58 PM conditions, I think it is of the utmost importance to continue to shift our healthcare paradigm to more of a preventative model. So many of the chronic diseases in our country such as heart disease, diabetes, and possibly cancer can be traced to lifestyle and environmental factors which we can modify. By investing more federal dollars in and improving access to alternative medicine such as nutritional couseling and naturopathic medical services, I believe we can lower the rates of chronic disease and therefore lower the insurance costs for the population at large. One other area I think we need to reduce spending is in the heroic medical options given to people in their final days of life which are so costly and do little to prolong life or increase the quality of life. I realize that this would also require a paradigm shift in our culture to becoming more comfortable with death, but I feel that this could potentially open up health care dollars for those earlier in life where it would increase overall survival. Thanks for listening I am uninsurable. I'm a trim, fit woman in her early thirties who eats well, doesn't UT 8/2/2006 11:21:42 AM smoke, takes no medicine beyond vitamins, and has no illnesses whatsoever. However, late last year, I had a miscarriage at approximately 8 weeks. Although miscarriage is very common, occurring in about 20% of all pregnancies, two insurance companies have declined me for coverage on this basis alone. In disbelief, I called the underwriting departments to check, and sadly, they both confirmed that a miscarriage without a subsequent full-term pregnancy makes me uninsurable. I am self-employed, so no group coverage is available for me. It appears that I must have a baby without the benefit of medical assistance, wait a year, and then reapply with my fingers crossed. How can this system be so broken? Who *is* insurable? My man concern with me and my family's healthcare is that I believe we are CA 5/11/2006 12:08:50 AM underinsured. My husband and I both are self-employed. He works more than full- time. I work part-time and also take care of my 3 year old daughter. We have a PPO private insurance. The premium is manageable but our deductable is very high and copayment is very steep. When I had my daughter it cost us well over $6,000. I am very concerned that if one of us experienced a serious medical condition we would lose our modest savings. Another experience which frightened and disappointed me is when i was preparing to become pregnant with my daughter I attempted to get better coverage. I was hoping I would have good luck with Kaiser but because I am on Lexapro for a very manageable anxiety disorder they told me my premium would be $700 per month. This made me feel as if I was being punished for taking care of myself. For actively and effectively treated myself for generalized anxiety I can not qualify, at an affordable cost, for better coverage. I was also surprised at this because I am extremely healthy otherwise. It made me wonder how others who are worse off them me fare in getting coverage. I am perfectly willing to pay a significant amount more in taxes for universal health care. I do not believe in getting something for nothing. I also believe, very strongly that is absolutely immoral that healthcare is largely a for profit business. This nations priorities need to put in order and healthcare needs to be at the top of the list. Working people like me and my husband are left to cross their fingers that we don't have a medical crisis. I would also like to add that i worked for many years in a hospital emergency room and saw, firsthand, how the ER is a place where the poor come for basic healthcare because they have no place else to go. i also saw that many people let there medical problems go until they are so serious they end up in the emergency room. It is a sad state of affairs. Thank you, Question We all have different experiences getting health insurance or in seeking health care. Sometimes these are good experiences, while other times they are not. We may meet very special providers or encounter new and innovative practices. Other times the American health care system disappoints us. Please tell us what has worked well or hasn't worked well for you or your family. Response State Date/time received I am concerned about our lack of emphasis on preventative care. I can't believe MS 8/30/2006 4:52:17 PM the amount of money we spend on drugs for chronic conditions such as diabetes and atherosclerosis as compared to the paltry sums we spend on awareness and prevention. I am a chiropractic physician. I am hopeful that a comprehensive health care plan MS 8/30/2006 5:16:12 PM can become a reality. I hope that preventative measures such as chiropractic care, exercise therapy, and nutrition will play a role in this plan. These preventative measures need to be present in community health centers and in all basic coverage. MDs should not be allowed to be the gatekeepers for these services, as they do not fully understand them. Chiropractic care needs to be a core member of any wellness package. In my first career in education, I had tradional insurance with no coverage for office NM 3/10/2006 9:21:48 PM visits or preventive care. At the time, when costs for routine care were reasonable, it was fine. In my second career in high tech I had employer-paid coverage for all care and prescriptions. This was terrific but unnecessary. Then I had cancer at 56. Now I can't get any coverage at any cost, and am holding my breath until Medicare. At the age of 62 I feel completely left out of all medical systems, because I'm not eligible for Medicaid. My husband and I are both self-employed. My husband is covered by the VA IN 3/20/2006 3:23:36 PM system, but I have no coverage. What I need is a plan that will allow for office visits and routine care. These kinds of plans are unbelievably expensive, and it is cheaper at this point for me to go without insurance, and pay the fees when I get sick and need to see a doctor. (The other day I paid $160 for a few antibiotic pills for a throat infection! Why in the world has medicine become so expensive?) However, I do worry about the catastrophic event that would land me in the hospital, or worse. I think health insurance is way too expensive for the average worker to afford, and we know many peple who stay at dead-end jobs just for the health insurance ---this is a sad situation. We are the richest nation in the world and yet we cannot insure health care for all people. When my husband left the corporate world a couple of years ago we needed to get IL 3/21/2006 2:42:55 PM private health insurance for the two of us and our four children. Not only is it exceedingly expensive, our then 13 yr. old daughter was not allowed on our plan because she broke her finger playing soccer a few months earlier. Just to clarify, it's not that they wouldn't cover the cost associated with the injured finger (which I would have understood), they wouldn't include her in our plan at all. We are a VERY healthy family; no smoking, no chronic illnesses of any kind, not even allergies. Yet, the insurance company that denied my daughter coverage (it was Blue Cross/Blue Shield by the way) employs, and offers health insurance coverage to it's dozens of overweight, smoking employees. Figure that one out! Having read many horrendous accounts of Americans who are suffering because na 6/8/2006 1:18:36 PM of a lack of affordable universal health care I feel lucky to live in Canada where I don't need to worry that my insurance will be discontinued or become unaffordable because of some mishap! This said, I hope to retire to my home land sometime in the future but this may not be possible because of a lack of a health care safety net like there is in Canada. Question We all have different experiences getting health insurance or in seeking health care. Sometimes these are good experiences, while other times they are not. We may meet very special providers or encounter new and innovative practices. Other times the American health care system disappoints us. Please tell us what has worked well or hasn't worked well for you or your family. Response State Date/time received I've noticed that most of all the insurance plans offered to me have been pretty NY 5/25/2006 11:44:46 PM good plans.