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the meaning of what I just posted? I think instead of "nuanced" difference this amounts to a semantic difference. Semantics is a fascinating subject. Two people can use the same words and mean two different things, based on their own perceptions and experiences. As everyone has different perceptions and experiences each word that they all use in common may have many different meanings to them. Did you ever see the movie Rashomon? Nine different people witness the same incident and each sees it in a different way, so there are nine different versions of what happened. Each one is true, it is simply a matter of perception.
This is what I think you are missing from my post. You are attaching different meanings to what I wrote than what I intended. After reading your last reply I am stumwatggled as to how I can make myself any more clear, except to say I want the same thing that you do. It doesn't matter if we "nuance" words fifty different ways for rest of the millennium, my meaning won't change. Those are all of the reasons I have always had for wanting health insurance available to everyone with parity for everyone. They do not change no matter how they are "nuanced." Now for a personal note which will not change no matter how it is "nuanced."
I'm for government run health care for all of the reasons I have given. I am also for government run health care for many personal reasons, because my husband barely survived a bout with MRSA last year, and I was a first hand witness to how his health insurance company mistreated him. MRSA is an antibiotic resistant strain of staph which began in hospitals, but has now spread out into the community. It is very contagious, aggressive and mutates constantly to defy treatment. People usually die from it.
My husband survived but the MRSA did the following:
1. Took from him the ability to walk and use his left arm. This functionality has returned but only just barely. He will never be able to walk normally again. He spends a large part of his day in a hospital bed. The doctors don't know why. No one has seen that many cases of MRSA where the patient has survived.
2. Caused my husband to have a heart attack and destroyed his aortic valve so that his blood could not oxygenate. They had to wait to do surgery until they cleared the MRSA out of his blood. Since his breathing, even with machines to help him, was becoming less and less efficient they had to operate sooner than it was safe to do so. He barely made it out of a 7 1/2 hour surgery which was only a partial success. They had to install an ICD later to control his heart beat and fibrillate his heart if it goes out of rhythm. One of the surgeons said he spent the whole surgery picking piles of dead MRSA bacteria off of, and out of my husband's heart. The MRSA had also given him Endocarditis, a severe inflammation of the heart. He now takes a galaxy of medications for his heart that he never had to take before. They are very expensive. He has to eat a salt and fat restricted diet. All fresh food. This is becoming more and more expensive, but he will have potentially fatal heart problems if he uses salt which is found in most prepared foods. He also is beginning to have congestive heart problems and fluids pooling his lungs. He has to clear his lungs daily.
3. Caused him to form blood clots in his lower extremities which took weeks to dissolve with Heparin in an IV. He went into heart surgery with blood clots which could have killed him if the surgeons had not been exceptionally skilled. But he would have died if they had not operated without taking the risk of dealing with the clots. He will have to take warfarin for the rest of his life to thin his blood and keep new clots from forming.
4. Damaged the lower portion of his lungs by collapsing the alveoli. The doctors tried to keep the alveoli from dying. They did not succeed. Between his heart and his lungs he is short of breath at the slightest exertion. The doctors do not know why the lung damage occurred. No one has seen that many cases of MRSA where the patient has survived.
5. Attacked my husbands bone marrow. His red blood counts dropped to the point where he was and is profoundly anemic. His white count dropped until he had virtually no immune system. We had to wear masks to protect him. His food had to be irradiated before he could eat it and he could only drink bottled water. The depression of his immune system caused a yeast overgrowth in his mouth and throat and sores which would not heal. Until the white blood counts came back of their own accord he was unable to chew food. He lived on his IVs, Cream of Wheat and Cream of Mushroom Soup. His platelet count fell so low that he cannot shave, because if he cuts himself it takes forever for him to stop bleeding. He can't use an electric razor because that would trigger his ICD. He was given at least five blood transfusions to try to equalize his blood count. They didn't work. His Hematologist took a bone marrow aspiration to try to see what was happening. It told him what was happening with my husbands bone marrow but not why, so there was very little the doctor was able to do. My husband was given injections of medications in the stomach daily first in the hospital, and then by me when he came home. I gave him the injections because his health insurance company would not pay for any home nursing visits even though they are contractually obliged to do so. They simply refused and nothing I could say or do would change their minds. They also tried to deny him the medication I injected, until his doctor threw a fit and threatened to admit him to the hospital again if my husband could not get the necessary medication for home use. The insurance company caved and we injected, carefully following the instructions that came with the medication and sweating the possibility of an air embolism. My husband read the instructions aloud and pinched up his own skin while I injected. Not an activity I would recommend for people if they have any other choice. My husband's blood is slowly returning to normal, but whether it will ever come back fully, the doctors don't know. No one has seen that many cases of MRSA where the patient has survived.
6. Caused my husband to have to take Vancomycin which is the antibiotic of last resort for resistant staph infections. The protocol to clear the MRSA was six weeks in the hospital under constant supervision. Vancomycin is very toxic and not easily tolerated. My husband made it less than four weeks before he had an anaphalactic reaction to the Vancomycin. His whole body swelled, his skin turned an orange tone and began to slough off. He developed a rash which was almost black in his lower extremities. It damaged his kidneys to the point where the doctors were discussing dialysis with us. Fortunately the elevated kidney functions dropped to the point where this was not necessary. However, my husband still has kidney damage. He will have some degree of impairment for the rest of his life. In this case though the doctors do know why. It is one of the things Vancomycin can do to patients who use it. That is why the patients must be so closely supervised.
7. Caused my husband to have liver damage. The liver damage resulted in the inability of the body to break down waste products efficiently. Ammonia is being released into my husbands bloodstream. This can cause lethargy, confusion, coma and death. Fortunately the doctors were able to diagnose what was happening and medicate him for it. This is also an expensive medication that he will have to take three times a day for the rest of his life. The doctors cannot say why this happened. No one has seen that many cases of MRSA where the patient has survived.
8. It "colonized" my husband's body so that any small infection or a cold or the flu can turn back into full blown MRSA which the doctors are able to tell us that he probably would not survive.
9. Because of the liver damage and the fact that the liver eliminates medications and other foreign substances from the body, my husband has a very narrow range of medications for other medical conditions that he can take without causing further harm. We have to check with a doctor each and every time before he takes any new medications. Even over the counter medications. We also have to be sure that the doctor we are talking to is familiar with MRSA, because many of them are not. No one has seen that many cases of MRSA where the patient has survived, or has seen that many cases of MRSA period. Unfortunately that is going to change. It was just my husband's terrible luck that he was one of the first cases from the community. They sent in an Epidemiologist to try to figure out where he got it, but that was not possible. It could have been anywhere.
Now to finally terminate this post, let me tell you that my husband was in an acute hospital, as he should have been for 16 weeks. All during this time his health insurance company kept trying to force an early discharge which would have killed him for sure. I could not move them; they would not discuss it with me. One insurance representative told me that in spite of the fact that they were denying covered services it was their right. They also told me that they never considered the actual coverage when they were making decisions on patient care. Fortunately he was in a non profit hospital and the head case worker, who has seen an awful lot of this crap did three or four successful appeals for us which overturned every one of the insurance company's decisions. She had the staff, she had the knowledge, she had the lawyers and she had the compassion to do so. She did a heck of a job. If it had not been for the excellent medical care by both my husband's nurses and doctors which was given in spite of the health insurance company he would not have survived. But how many people have access to staff people at hospitals who care so much. It was a fluke that we did. It just happened to be the closest hospital with a vacancy that the EMTs could take us to. Your life should not depend on dumb luck. Everyone should have access to this type of care, but they do not because of the health insurance companies.
After he got home, the insurance company as I have stated, denied home nursing ordered by my husband's doctors and which was pursued by the hospital case workers, denied him physical therapy which might have helped him to regain muscle tone and walk, and denied durable medical equipment such as a walker, again ordered by his doctors and pursued by hospital case workers. In short after paying high premiums for years, higher co payments every year for less, and much more for prescription coverage the insurance company was not there for us unless the hospital was standing on them and forcing them to do what little they ended up doing. All this stress and frustration and fear during what is one of the worst times of a person's life anyway, a serious illness that could kill them and is not easily cured or curable.
We are still here, still alive, but nearly bankrupt and living with my husband's severe illness which no one understands, and my severe autoimmune disorder which is understood but not easily treatable, especially when the health insurance company would rather not treat it. We have no safety nets because Bush and other mostly Republican politicians took them away. Utopia, as you seem to envision it isn't happening right now and may not happen because the ugly fact is that the rich control the purse strings and the purse strings control a lot of politicians who could help all of us, but won't. What should happen will not happen easily, or may not happen at all if things go badly. We will keep trying, we will help other people the best we can no matter what is happening in our own lives, and hopefully we can create change together. Sometimes the nuances are not as important as the reality. Especially when we are talking about the same goal and for the same reasons.
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