Originally published July 22, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1079
I debated with myself whether to write about this, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with comics. But it’s an interesting little saga in my life, related to my getting older, and also provides a cautionary tale for anyone who finds him- or herself in similar straits. So I relate it to you now:
I first felt the lump in my chest more than two months ago.
It’s not as if I had been looking for it. Just somehow or other my chest itched on the left side one night, and, as I scratched it, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before: a hardening under the skin on the left breast area, which did not have a match on the right side.
I handled this discovery in my customary calm manner.
I became hysterical.
This lasted for about 20 minutes, and, after I got it out of my system, I resolved to go to the doctor.
He checked it over.
“It’s probably nothing,” he said, “but just to play it safe, I want you to see a surgeon.”
So I went to see the surgeon that he recommended.
He checked it over.
“It’s probably nothing,” he said, “but just to play it safe, I want you to have a mammogram.”
(It was around this time that I was becoming extremely self-conscious about the possibility of a condition such as breast cancer that is commonly associated with females. This state of mind lasted precisely as long as it took for a voice in my head to say, “Hey, jerk, would you prefer a lump in one of your (as we refer to it in a family publication such as this one) co-dependents? Would that be macho enough for you?”)
So I had a mammogram.
The surgeon checked it over and said to me, “It’s probably nothing, but, just to play it safe, I want to surgically remove your entire left breast.”
It was at this point that I was seeing myself six feet under with an epitaph that read, “It’s probably nothing…”
“The whole thing?” I said. “Couldn’t we just do a biopsy or something?”
“Well we could,” said the surgeon. “But, if the biopsy comes back positive, we’d have to do a second procedure. Why put you through that again? Might as well just remove the breast tissue. Since you’re a male, it’s no big deal.”
“Won’t it be noticeable?” I asked. “Like, if I go swimming or something.”
“Hardly at all,” he said. “Probably not at all.”
Now I, like most everyone else in society, was trained from earliest childhood to do what the doctor says. Doctors are elevated to their lofty status in our minds, possibly because of the title itself: doctor. Car mechanics, plumbers, lawyers—anyone whom we employ to fix something—we address by their first name or, at most, “Mr. or Ms.” plus a surname. But doctors get a title. They work for us, we hire them, we pay them, and yet we willingly subordinate ourselves to them. We make them the boss, even though, technically, we should be.
That title “Doctor” unites them in their superiority to us, but one is reminded of the truism that even the guy who graduates last in his class at medical school still gets to be called “Doctor.”
Forcing myself to overcome 30-plus years of medical deference, I said, “I… think I’d like to get a second opinion on this.”
“As you wish,” he said, “but nine out of 10 doctors would agree with my recommendation. It’s no big deal.”
I went to a respected hospital in the area and saw a surgeon in the surgical ward. I related the entire story to his nurse, Nancy (whom I started calling Nurse Nancy, as if we were in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood). Nurse Nancy kind of blinked when I told her what the first surgeon had said.
The second one, whom we’ll call Doctor S., checked me over and studied the mammogram (the bringing along of which saved tons of time). And he said, “There’s definitely something there. A biopsy is definitely in order.”
“You don’t think we should just remove the whole breast to play it safe?” I asked.
“I don’t think that’s at all necessary,” said Doctor S. “First, the odds are that it’s nothing, since male breast cancer is relatively rare. And second, you’d be noticeably asymmetrical for the rest of your life whenever you go swimming.”
I turned to the nurse and said, “How about that, Doctor #10, first crack out of the box. What are the odds of that, huh?”
I went for what they call pre-admission testing. This consists of two things: (1) draining various body fluids for testing purposes and (2) meeting with four or five people in different parts of the hospital, all situated as far from each other as possible and all of whom ask you the same dámņëd questions. It’s as if they’re trying to catch you at something, so that they can say, “Ah ha! Now we’re going to make you start all over again!”
And am I the only one who finds a certain degree of irony in being asked questions such as “Are you healthy?”
My immediate response to this was, “I’m here, aren’t I? Obviously there’s something wrong with me. If I were here and healthy, I’d be an employee, not a patient.”
I then spent the next seven days between the tests and the actual operation being worried that I was going to get sick. Because if I came down with even a mild cold, they couldn’t do the operation, and we’d have to start all over again. And the prospect of having to give more blood for tests didn’t thrill me. I’m not real good at that. If I want to have blood sucked out of me, I’ll volunteer for a tax audit.
Fortunately, I stayed healthy and went to the hospital on the appointed day. I was there on an outpatient basis, so no overnight stay was required.
I checked in and was given an idiotic outfit they insisted I wear: a shin-length gown with a blue, sleeveless robe over it.
“You can’t be serious,” I told the nurse indignantly. “I look like Bea Arthur.”
“You’ll elevate your blood pressure, Mr. David. Just go lie down in the back, please,” she said unsympathetically.
“God will get you for this,” I warned her.
A nurse was assigned to put me in a wheelchair and wheel me down to pre-op. There was a railing along the wall, presumably for patients who were only semi-ambulatory. To amuse myself, whenever we approached a group of people who were clearly visitors, I grabbed the railing in a desperate two-handed grip and shrieked, “No! No! Don’t do it! Don’t cut them off! Don’t do it! Don’t make me go!”
Oddly, the nurse seemed glad to leave me in pre-op and beat a hasty retreat back to admitting.
In pre-op, when I was just lying there and having nothing with which to occupy my mind except thoughts of impending operations, I really started to get jumpy. Sticking an IV in my wrist, with my fear of needles (which was why I would have made a lousy junkie), did not help. To a degree I wouldn’t have minded being knocked out altogether, but it was being done under a local anesthetic. They said it was going to burn like hëll when injected, so I was really looking forward to that.
And the most aggravating aspect was that several female orderlies had a television on tuned to The Joan Rivers Show. The assistant anesthesiologist and I were the only males in the room.
The topic, as my luck would have it, was “The Sexiest Men in America.” So there I was, worried about what hideous things might be growing in my chest and imminently burning like hëll, and I was surrounded by women hooting and hollering, as men with disgustingly perfect bodies were gyrating about doing stripteases on TV. Ordinarily such fare wouldn’t bother me, but I was holding myself together with spit and baling wire at this point.
The assistant anesthesiologist, seeing my agitation, requested that they change the channel.
They refused.
Now…
If it had been male orderlies watching women stripping on TV, and the patient and assistant anesthesiologist had been female and making that request—and had been refused—the sexual harassment case would have been in court faster than you could say, “Malpractice.” And I’ll betcha the plaintiff would have won, too.
At that point I was so worked up that I was looking around for a large object to throw at the TV screen in hopes of shattering it.
The assistant anesthesiologist picked that moment, however, to introduce what he called “a cousin of Valium” into my IV.
Keep in mind that I’ve never been drunk (since I don’t really drink) and I’ve never been high (since I’ve never done drugs; no, not even so much as putting a weed to my mouth and not inhaling). And I’ve never taken Valium. So I didn’t know what to expect. I was still incredibly tense.
A woman appeared at my side. “Mr. David, do you remember me?”
It was dim, and they’d taken away my glasses. “No,” I said brusquely. But then I squinted. “Nurse Nancy.”
My left hand was wrapped around the metal bar of the bedside in a death grip. She put her hand on mine and said, “Everything is going to be all right.” Of all the people I’d encountered since the whole hospital thing began, she was the first person to say that.
Thirty seconds later, I was out cold.
The next thing I knew, I was lying in the O.R., feeling like I was in a David Copperfield demonstration, because there was a thing on my neck blocking my view of the rest of my body. I think they do that so you don’t see the doctor looking madly at the book of instructions, or perhaps consulting the game Operation to double check where certain body parts are.
So I was coming to on the table, trying to get my bearings, my mind in a sort of fugue state.
And, for reasons that will forever be a mystery to me—even though I’m sure that somewhere, in the dream-like recesses of whatever brain functions were operating at that moment, my actions made sense…
For some reason, I picked that moment to start singing show tunes.
To be specific, the score of Les Miserables.
Imagine the surprise of the O.R. staff, when the patient, whom they didn’t know was awake, suddenly began to chant (on key, so I’m told), “Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry men…”
Dr. S., without missing a beat or a stitch, joined in.
In unison, we sang all of “When Tomorrow Comes.” I started “Master of the House” but got bored halfway through.
I switched to Gilbert and Sullivan.
Dr. S. told me later that he was thunderstruck. I still had enough tranquilizers in me to pacify a hyena, and I was flawlessly rattling off, “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,” a feat that the doctor (who was lucid, presumably) could not begin to duplicate, even if he’d had the libretto in front of him.
Then came post-op and a return to the ambulatory surgery office, where the nurse (the same one who had ignored my sartorial complaints) said that I wouldn’t be able to leave until I could walk. Woozy but defiant, I was immediately on my feet. “Hah!” I said, took two steps, and walked into the door frame. “I did that on purpose, just to show I can still clown around,” I said, before sinking back into the chair and not venturing forth again for 20 minutes.
Eventually I got my locomotion back, got to put on my normal clothes, and was waiting for some guy to bring up a prescription for painkillers. He brought it and told me excitedly, “I wanted to bring this up myself, so I could tell you what a fan I am of your work.”
I didn’t immediately lock on to what he was saying. “What?”
“Your work. Your writing.”
I’d have laughed, if it wouldn’t have hurt, and was only glad that this fan of Peter David, writer of stuff, didn’t swing by during my “Maude” phase: not the best way to meet and greet fans.
He turned to the nurses—the ones whom I’d been torturing—and said, “You have no idea who this is, do you?”
The nurses looked at each other. I’m sure they were thinking, “Sure, he’s the guy we can’t wait to get rid of.” He started filling them in on my credits. One of them handed him a piece of paper, and he had me autograph it.
My status was quo once more.
A week later, the biopsy came back. Benign. Just some inflamed and hardened tissue.
It was nothing. Of course, look what I missed by going for a second opinion: a lifetime of being self-conscious at swimming pools.
Nowadays, health care becomes more and more of an issue. There’s talk of cutting back or eliminating a patient’s right to choose doctors. Or refusing to pay for getting a second opinion. I know, intellectually, that we cannot continue with health care as it’s been. On the other hand, I am not sanguine about the thought of health care conditions that would have made it more likely that I’d needlessly be minus a chunk of my anatomy that—while not particularly functional—has, nevertheless, been with me for quite some time.
Peter David, writer of stuff, shortly after writing this, learned of the passing of DC Editor Neal Pozner at a nauseatingly young age. Neal was a swell guy whom I had the opportunity to work with in producing what turned out to be a memorable Penguin story for DC’s Showcase. I didn’t know him all that well personally, but on a professional level he was a bright and creative guy, and he deserved better. I will miss him.
• 
Your musical interlude reminds me of Lois Bujold’s “Brothers in Arms”, in which Miles, dosed with fast penta, has one of his idiosyncratic reactions and begins babbling anything and everything (except what the Bad Guys are trying to find out) at high speed, finishing up with the entirety of “Henry V” (i think; one of the numerical Shakespeares, anyway – it’s been some time).
And incidents like these are a shining example of why those against ObamaCare were so passionate. the very possibility that people will lose control over which doctors they see, let alone get a second opinion and that decisions may be made by a bureaucrat based on cost alone rather than need not only strikes at the core of people it makes them feel like they will be losing control and be less self-reliant.
Others have and will continue to argue about how real these fears are. I will refrain for today.
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Happy New Year, everyone:)
Uh, Jerome….you’re writing under the assumption that this doesn’t happen NOW. Because your health is ALREADY under the control of administrators, not medical personnel.
Obviously the people against ObamaCare have nfc what insurance companies actually do every day: they take your money, don’t want to cover you, and hope you drop dead having never needed a major surgery beforehand.
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“Death panels” indeed.
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“… and that decisions may be made by a bureaucrat based on cost alone rather than need …”
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Jerome, over the last 20 years I’ve been insured by three different health insurance companies. All of them were/are major names who are national companies. All of the plans I had through them were supposed to be some of their better plans.
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Under two of them I ran into issues where my doctor suggested something be done and the insurance company said that they wouldn’t approve or cover it because they felt that it was unnecessary.
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From this last year I’m just getting the medical bills and debt we racked up during Jenn’s pregnancy down to the last few payments and over with. Why? Because my wife has a seizure condition caused by an accident when she was younger. To better insure the safety of the baby they had to cut back the dosage level of some of her meds and she had to outright stop taking one. This created risks for her and the fetus in other ways. The way to minimize these risks was that for every doctor’s visit she made that would be a “normal” visit for anyone else she also was scheduled for an additional test and a visit to her neurologist so that he could also keep a close check on her. This is what the doctor at Henrico Doctor’s Hospital who was in charge of her overall pregnancy care advised.
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The insurance company declared that they saw no need for these extra tests and would not cover it as a part of the pregnancy. These tests were merely unnecessary things that weren’t needed and if we were to have them done they would not be covered as a part of the needed procedures related to the pregnancy.
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So I ended up working almost nonstop, back to back 12 and 14 hour days every day I worked and 4 to 12 hours on some of my off days for months on end to get the overtime I needed just to cover the upfront costs. Our second child was born back in June. I’m still paying that stuff off. Had I not been able to get the over time I got who knows what would have happened. Jenn could have had a serious issue and lost the baby or we could have still gotten the stuff done with me still being thousands in the hole right now rather than a few hundred in the hole.
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A few years ago when Jenn was helping her mom deal with her grandparents she was getting royally pìššëd øff about things. Her grandparents’ doctor had advised several things that would have at least minimized the suffering her grandmother was going through as she was getting closer to her death. They were all shot down by the insurance company. Not a doctor, not a medical expert hired by the company who came in and compared notes or even took so much as one look at the patient in question, but rather by an insurance company bureaucrat.
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And in every case, and in so many more, some of which even get to the lawsuit stage, the answer that the insurance companies come back with is always the same. They, the insurance company, don’t feel that it’s cost efficient or worth it. They, the insurance company, feel that you should have the cheaper medicine/operation/procedure in some cases rather than the one that’s most effective.
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And they’ve been doing that for years. Hëll, it’s been a long, hard uphill slog to get insurance companies to recognize that preventative care actually reduces long term costs in most things and they still sometimes fight that one tooth and nail even when you have more than one doctor recommending such care.
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“And incidents like these are a shining example of why those against ObamaCare were so passionate. the very possibility that people will lose control over which doctors they see, let alone get a second opinion… “
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Which is different than the way things are right now… How?
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I have health insurance. I have what most people would consider to be good insurance from a good company. I can’t go to just any old doctor or dentist that I want to. They have to be in the plan/group or (barring a life threatening possibly emergency) I pay higher upfront costs or even the entire costs. And even in the case of an emergency I’m not sure I wouldn’t get screwed over.
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This is the one thing I hate about the argument put forward by the people that are the most militantly opposed to ObamaCare. The loudest arguments put forward essentially boils down to saying that the problem with ObamaCare is that it would be no different than what was out there before the passage of the thing. And that’s just to easily refuted by pointing out that what’s being held up as the dangers of Obamacare that we may face are the things we’re already facing anyhow and that Obamacare actually eliminates some of the hassles in these things as well as adding protection to people like my wife who have preexisting conditions and such or not letting insurance companies drop people once they get sick just because the insurance company decides that the person is no longer profitable to them.
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There are a lot of little problems with ObamaCare and a few large problems as well. But these ain’t even on the list.
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With that out of the way…
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Happy New Year, Jerome.
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Happy New Year to everyone else as well.
But these ain’t even on the list.
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I maintain that the biggest problem with health insurance are insurance companies.
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Another big problem is indeed waste – truly unnecessary tests and so forth. And don’t even start on ‘tort reform’, another darling of the GOP, as that doesn’t really make a dent.
Even though the Government keeps you from buying plans across state lines or paying for just the coverage you want you can go to another insurance company (in theory at least). With the Government there is not other choice, no where else to go, for your entire life. Be happy for what we are doing for you and shut up.
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Yeah Joel, if you don’t like the insurance that the government is offering you’re screwed. Or you can, you know, go get it from an insurance company instead of the government set up.
With the Government there is not other choice, no where else to go, for your entire life.
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The irony being, of course, if you had a pre-existing condition, then every insurance company would just reject you and you couldn’t get insurance from anybody.
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Now, because of the government, these people will be able to get insurance not just from the government if they want, but also insurance companies.
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“Be happy for what we are doing for you” and by all means bûggër off.
I had no idea biopsies were so involved…
I don’t have the words to say how awesome it is you sang while being biopsied.
I’m reminded of Asimov’s behaviour when he had his thyroid surgery. Maybe this is normal for great writers.
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‘God will get you for this.’ — I love that bit. I hope I’m not the only who got it.
And then there’s PAD.
Ebonstone: I had no idea biopsies were so involved…
Luigi Novi: At least Peter got general anesthesia. When I had my biopsy done, the son of bìŧçh would only give me local. I felt everything, as he cut a lymph node out of the side of my neck. I still sometimes fantasize about sticking that scalpel into one of his bodily orifices.
UGH.
Nor did I realize that Local didn’t eliminate all sensation in the area.
I know, intellectually, that we cannot continue with health care as it’s been.
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And yet, 15 years on…
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When I had my wisdom teeth out, they put me under. I woke up during the procedure; I didn’t open my eyes, but I could hear everybody around me. Of course, they told me I was full of it afterward, and that I couldn’t possibly have woken up. Right.
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Third seconds to be knocked out cold, huh? Again, for my wisdom teeth, they started the stuff going into my arm and asked me to count down from 10. I think I got to 6.
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Now, Valium, I liked that stuff. They gave me one before I had my PRK eye surgery. I wasn’t particularly nervous going into it, but it was a case of their wanting me as relaxed as possible, seeing as they were pointing lasers into my eyes and all.
My husband found a lump in his breast when he was in his early thirties. He had a mammogram but did not need a biopsy. He works with many older women and loves the look on their faces when they complain about mammograms and he chimes in about his. It opens up conversations about breast cancer in men and has led to a few of his male co-workers having their lumps checked.
Might as well mention, in the light of this piece, that I’m starting the new year on Monday with gall bladder surgery. I’m told it will probably be a laproscopic procedure and that I’ll be back home the same day or the next. (I need to hear that always before an operation thanks to an appendectomy where, it turned out, the appendix had burst, the operaton took three hours, and I was in the hospital for 17 days, during which they did NOT sew me back up, but let the incision heal “naturally.”)
Personally, I’m hoping that, after the surgery, I’ll wake up from this awful dream that seems to have been going on for over 57 years now.
I’m a child of the 80s. Every show I watched as a kid was a 22 minute toy ad interrupted every 5-10 minutes for a minute or two of ads for toys, cereal and really crappy PSAs to get kids to say no drug or yes to reading. Ninja Turtles would introduce elements like the slime pit or the retro catapult for an episode or two simply because Playmates wanted them in the toy line. Some episodes (and writers) were worse than others leaving me to suspect there was higher pay involved for each item included in the script.
Okay, I’m a little curious as to what that has to do with the topic at hand.
I think they meant this to be in product placement.
Kath
Oh, thank God.
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When I skimmed Jess’ message and saw at a glance the phrases “slime pit” and “retro catapult”, I thought, “Man, how crappy is his HMO?”
This is for Mr. Peter David..
A long time ago (2005ish) in a far away galaxy (Jamaica Plain, Ma.) I worked as a Comcast technician. I installed internet services for 3 or 4 college students. They also needed a wireless network so I ended up having to come back and when I did, I kinda intentionally dragged out the install (hey I was in the company of (three or) four college girls, what would you do?) Anyway, I actually really started having technical difficulties out of my control and it starting getting really late so I had to come back the next day to finish it.. But during this time, I had the opportunity to get to know one of the most interesting people I have ever met. She made me something to munch on, so i took a short break and during that time, I think I ended up sketching a picture or two and she said “hay thats cool, my dad (if I remember correctly) works for Marvel and writes for Star Trek in New York”… “his name is Peter David!” Her name was Gwen, Gwen David. We started to hang out alot. I even spent that Christmas with her and her strange (no I dont want to use that word).. Interesting (that works) friends. Shortly after that we parted ways and I havent seen her since. I said all that just to say.. Tell her I wish her a Happy New Year and I hope things are going well…
and I never got to really say thanks for Shake n bake, a cold IBC root beer (always one in the fridge) and the way she used to make stovetop popcorn… Thanks.. Uh,.. live long and prosper
p.s. Im glad youll be able to go swimming with your shirt off. =)
Peter has a daughter named Gwen?! I should have guessed.
Yes, getting a second opinion is vital. I wish my sister, who recently passed away from cancer, had done so. Her doctor misdiagnosed her cancer, his nurse (a real bìŧçh) didn’t schedule a vital test for her, and by the time my sister was aware that something odd was going on, her breast cancer had morphed into bone cancer. Her cancer kept changing, and the doctor kept playing catch-up. It was pathetic. Maybe in the end, nothing could have been done to cure her, but the incompetence of her doctor and his nurse prolonged her suffering and subjected her to operations and treatments that did no good and inflicted untold agony on her. The lesson here is: DOCTORS ARE NOT GOD. We should never forget that.
Jerry,
“Yeah Joel, if you don’t like the insurance that the government is offering you’re screwed. Or you can, you know, go get it from an insurance company instead of the government set up.”
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For how long, Jerry? Seriously. Premiums are already shooting up because, well, SOMEBODY has to pay for those new people now being covered – that now HAVE to be covered by law.
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This will, of course, feed on itself. the more premiums go up, the more people will be forced to the government plan, the more premiums will go up, the more people will will be forced to the government plan, the more it becomes likely the insurance companies no longer feel it is profitable to stay in business, the more people will be forced t the government plan, until we eventually have a single-payer system.
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This is, of course, the goal of many liberals. Kucinich is a perfect example. Obama said as much many years ago.
Once this is fully in motion, it will be almost impossible to reverse. Yet the same people who are obsessed with the earth warming by a couple of degrees in the next 50 years, who are sure about that and are convinced we need to plan ahead now, refuse to analyze the long-term effects this monstrosity of a bill will have on our average quality of care – never mind making it even more impossible to tackle our budget deficit.
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There is no free lunch. The only question is who is going to pay the price and not just financially.
Premiums are already shooting up
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Premiums were already going up at a double-digit %-age rate per year for a number of years now. They were going to continue to do so, regardless of changes in the law.
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Now it’s simply that the insurance companies have another pretense to raise them, something specific that they can blame while they continue to rob us blind.
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“For how long, Jerry? Seriously. Premiums are already shooting up because, well, SOMEBODY has to pay for those new people now being covered – that now HAVE to be covered by law.”
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Jerome, premiums have been shooting up annually, sometimes by leaps and bounds, every year for years now. About 5 years ago the increase was enough that it countered out and actually surpassed the reduced raise we got that year due to budget issues.
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The other thing is that ObamaCare didn’t increase the premiums one red cent. The insurance companies, in a year where they were showing record profits, jacked up their premiums, in some cases, increased what people had to pay as their co-pay and reduced benefits before ObamaCare even went into effect. The only real difference between 2010 and every other year before it was that the opponents of President Obama weren’t reporting on every increase in costs and decrease in benefits while yelling “ObamaCare!” in hysterical fashion. In previous years they basically just didn’t care about it one way or the other.
I don’t understand why conservatives aren’t in support of this.
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Because if many of them had their way, they’d tell anybody without insurance that they’re just SOL. “Have an emergency? Too dámņ bad; go get a job.” That sort of crap.
“For how long, Jerry? Seriously. Premiums are already shooting up because, well, SOMEBODY has to pay for those new people now being covered – that now HAVE to be covered by law.”
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This is the basic myth of those who oppose the health care bill.
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The only new people being introduced into the health care system are the people who have been born. Every citizen in the country has health, therefore every citizen in the country has need of health care.
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It is true that not every citizen in the US has health INSURANCE. There are many reasons for this: cost saving, ignorance, inability, or a combination of these and other factors. But, when a citizen who does not have health insurance gets critically injured or critically sick, they are cared for at the hospital.
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Who do you think pays for that now?
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A person without medical insurance, who gets hospitalized, either receives care paid for by the government, or gets inadequate care the cost of which is absorbed by the hospital’s overhead. Both of these things cause the cost to be distributed among other people, most often you and me in the form of higher taxes or the form of higher medical costs.
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I don’t understand why conservatives aren’t in support of this. While there are some uninsured who are that way because insurance companies will not insure them, people whose welfare many liberals are concerned for, there are also some uninsured who are, basically, freeloaders who float through life hoping that they do not get sick, and knowing that if they do they will still be cared for at least minimaly.
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The health care bill forces these people to take responsibility and prepare for the inevitable medical event. They have to have insurance, either through a commercial or governmental agency, so that the rest of us don’t have to shoulder their burden.
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The only people who are at any risk of facing higher costs are the insurance companies, themselves. And, this isn’t due to “more people entering the system.” It is due to their customer base having a second option.
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At current, a health insurance company can, basically, say: “You work for (company) therefore you cannot buy insurance from me.” Which means that, “You work for (company) therefore you have to buy insurance from me.” And, since you HAVE to buy insurance or face severe indirect penalties (such as, loss of your children if you have any – no, seriously, if my girlfriend didn’t have health insurance on her kids they would go to her ex and if he didn’t have overlapping insurance on them he would lose visitation rights) they can charge you whatever they want.
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This is how they continually show record profits. They are not a capatilistic entity, they are an effective monopoly on a necessary commodity. The intruduction of a public option would require them to join capatilism and actually give service equitable to their costs.
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Which, of course, is why health care spokesman are quick to claim that a public option is socialist. They don’t want to be in a capatilist industry, because in capatilism competition enforces value.
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Theno
Jerry,
So if you know your rent is going to double three months down the road – something that has actually happened to me – you’re saying you just deal with it when it happens? You don’t cut luxuries? Save? Work more overtime/ You do none of these things to plan for when you have to take the hit?
Because it seems to me that’s all the insurance companies are doing. They’re spreading out the pain and planning so they can take the hit that is coming. They would be foolish to wait until after the fact.
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I would agree with you if this was something new, but the insurance rates have been going up every year before now and they started going up at higher % rates in the late 2000s.
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Depending on the company, the premiums went up 119% to 130% from late 1999 to 2008 while benefits went down and co-pays went up. And during that time, despite higher and higher profits and last years almost record high profits, they kept saying that they needed to raise premiums higher.
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What they’re doing is not new. The only new aspect of it is that they get to cry and claim to be victims of ObamaCare.
I remember this column from when it first came out — as it was one of my favorites. I think I even quoted from it for a term paper or speech or something.
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Anyway, when re-reading it here, I would almost swear there is a sentence or two missing here and there. Was the column edited a bit or is my memory faulty? If it was edited, who has that unenviable (or I guess it could be enviable — some people might get a kick out of excising the words of Peter David) chore?
PAD, not only did I have the same situation you noted above (they removed an infected nodule, as outpatient surgery) but I also had to have spinal surgery.
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I was really lucky in that they went in through the front of my neck, allowing me just a couple of weeks of recuperation, instead of through the back, involving months of recuperation. But there is a hazard to the vocal cords, since they have to go past the throat and all those parts… and there was a chance, they told me, that my voice could be damaged… or lost.
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Luck favors the foolish, it seems, as I came through in one piece. And as they were rolling me back from surgery to my room, to be sure that I could still sing, I was singing “Rolling Stock” from Starlight Express… very good, according to those nurses who had to hear it through the halls…
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Glad you came through in one piece too!
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I remain,
Sincerely,
Eric L. Sofer
x<]:o){
The Bad Clown
I reread this with a great deal of amusement and trepidation–I go in later this month for that grand old procedure known as a colonoscopy, and gee golly I can’t WAIT for that, let me tell you. Especially the special all-night ceremonial purging the night before.
About ten years ago I had to go in for gallbladder surgery. They had me prepped and waiting to go, adding the standard dose of Versed to knock me loopy. They also sprayed an anesthetic down my throat to facilitate the tube insertion (it was the first and probably only time in my life I will ever hear “your mouth’s too small”). Trouble was, the Versed dose wasn’t quite enough. I was quite aware of where I was and starting to panic because even though I knew I could breathe my throat sure didn’t feel that way. When the nurse finally came back around, I motioned for her attention. She blinked and said, “You’re still awake???”
That’s when I got dose #2, and let me tell you they had one HÊLL of a time waking me up later.
Needless to say I’m mentioning all this prior to my upcoming procedure.