That elephant, again, is the potential for government employees of all levels, including those of which like to freeze their bribe money, to snoop into other peoples’ private medical records.

I mean, this is the blog that informs me about the Rethuglicans preventing military family members from getting Plan B

Or those that think “Contraception is next issue after abortion. And pro-lifers must work it through.”

Or how the NSA is data-mining all of our phone records.

Or how AT&T is peering all it’s Internet data with the NSA.

Or how perhaps the FDA might be swayed into keeping the HPV vaccine off the market.

So what’s going on here? You all know that the anti-choice people would love to get the names of those who have had abortions or even BC, so they could send them all off to the re-education camps, so what gives?

I can only guess that those who would support any kind of government controlled healthcare either think that medical privacy no longer matters, or that the moment we get socialized medicine in the USA, the horns will blow in the heavens; the United States will instantly turn into one of those enlightened European countries, except that it’s really freaking big, and has slightly less cool architecture; oh, and all the “fundies” will melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Am I missing a third option? Please, do tell.

Standard Mischief, do you understand fucking ANYTHING about the Canadian medical system? Because I live here, and the stuff you’re saying bears no relation to the system I’ve been getting my health care from since 1978.

Seems like I do, but hey, thanks for your input!

.. You can only get 13 packs (at 28 days per pack) paid for in one year. However, when I wanted to skip my period because I was going on vacation, and thus went through my 13 pack prescription in slightly less than a year, my doctor came up with a very logical solution…

Damn, looks like I was spot on here, zuzu. Thankfully, it’s no more restricted than your average HMO here in the states. I figured it was like this the same way most people figure out which way to flick the light switch when you walk into a dark room. You don’t even think about it, most of the time just from past experience, you flick it up.

Prescriptions are handled by pharmacies, not by the government. If you have an extended health plan, often times you can get the co-payment taken off when you get your meds, [snip rest of interesting paragraph]

So you are saying the all encompassing Canadian healthcare has not yet reached prescription plans? That’s interesting. I do know, however that the Canadian government has instituted price controls on pharmaceuticals, nationwide.

I have a fair bit of choice in terms of which doctor I see, certainly much more than an American whose HMO will only allow him to see certain doctors. Possibly because universal healthcare is like one big HMO, but where NOBODY doesn’t have coverage. Yes, there are problems with the damn system, yes there are waiting lists for non-emergency care and non-life threatening surgeries, but if your doctor pisses you off you can go to another one without being restricted to the doctors of whom the HMO approves.

For this very reason, I’ve had a PPO for years. I could got to any doctor I wanted, but if I stayed on a pre-approved list, I only had to pay the copay. I never needed a referral, I could just go to a specialist if I wanted. I even had a decent prescription program. However, even though I had the very best coverage available short of visiting heads of state from corrupt third-world countries who have near unlimited funds and pay for the very best care by the hour, I still got shafted. See below.

And if you are diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness when you go to a doctor, you will always get care. In the US, if you’re unlucky enough to be diagnosed with a serious illness at your first trip to the doctor when you sign onto a health plan, that’s a pre-existing condition, and they don’t have to pay. Which means you’re probably mortgaging your house to get treatment. I have many complaints about Canada’s health care system, but I’d take living in a country where getting seriously ill doesn’t also mean you may end up bankrupt over living in the US any day. Mainly BECAUSE I am appalled that the richest country int he world, which put a man on the moon and spends billions on fighter jets, doesn’t have a public health care system.

Look, I’ve already freely admitted that the way we tend to do healthcare here in the USA has serious problems. And I haven’t even touched on what happens when you don’t have coverage.
In my case, I had just about the best coverage plan one could buy.

My GP could not figure out my problem, so he sent me to a bunch of specialist. I saw a dozen specialist on my plan’s dime, but not a single one of them spent more than fifteen minutes on me. Frequently they ordered diagnostic tests, frequently the very same tests. Two of the doctors ordered a battery of blood tests before I even saw them. I don’t “know anything” about blood test “kickbacks”, but many of the doctors employed people who’s sole job was to take blood. I think that they received payment back from the lab for every vial they drew because as soon as I instituted a strict policy of only having my blood drawn at a lab, to prevent the doctors from receiving kickbacks, the blood test batteries stopped. They were pumping my excellent coverage for cash, which drives up costs for everyone else on my system. Also, in an effort to control costs, my plan would try to disallow coverage for shit, after-the-fact of course. Oh, and I already mentioned the “drug roulette” game
.
In the end, I went around to the dozen doctors, got all my records (got in to a few nasties here. a few asserted that they weren’t my records) and hit the books. I had to cross index my results, make lists of all the possible nasties I might have, and then I cornered my GP at my next visit. I got his full attention for about 40 minutes, and he sat down with me and we reviewed my records, and crossed out, one-by-one, the various things that I didn’t have.

In the end I made the diagnosis, he merely confirmed it. Treatment was surprisingly inexpensive, the actual diagnosis saga spanned over two years and cost thousands of dollars, most of which was redundant and was paid by my PPO. The not-so-funny thing is if they had sprung for perhaps an hour of real doctoring and a small battery of focused tests, they could have saved thousands.

If poor women in the US could afford the regular “well woman” check-ups which are a huge part of preventive medicine, and catch medical problems before they become very serious,and maybe if uninsured pregnant American women could go to the OB/GYN on a regular basis over the course of their pregnancy, the US might not have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba. Fucking Cuba, which, may I remind you, is considered by many to be Third World country. You know which developed country on that list had the highest infant mortality rates: Latvia. That’s the only industrialized country in the entire fucking world where more babies die in infancy than in the US. And I had a roommate from Latvia. Trust me, being able to say you’re better at something than Latvia is pretty pathetic. Like an American bobsled team saying they’re better than the team from Jamaica.

I’m with you 100% on the preventive care, but the rest of this may be cooking-the-books. See this (including the comments):

http://www.saysuncle.com/archives/2006/05/10/the_feminine_mistake/

Raincitygirl, thank you for commenting, you have added a bunch to the discourse here.

First of all, most extended health care plans (i.e. when your employer covers the cost of precriptions, pays for dental care, and pays all or part of user fees for semi-covered services like massage therapy or physical therapy) won’t let you get more than three month’s worth of the Pill at a time, even if your prescription is for a year. You can only get 13 packs (at 28 days per pack) paid for in one year. However, when I wanted to skip my period because I was going on vacation, and thus went through my 13 pack prescription in slightly less than a year, my doctor came up with a very logical solution. She gave me two different prescriptions, one for 13 packs to cover the upcoming year and which I would have the pharmacy charge to my workplace health plan, and one scrip for 1 pack which I bought without going through my health plan, and paid cash for. If memory serves, it cost about $25. I know other women who’ve elected to not have their period every so often, and they did the same thing.

Prescriptions are handled by pharmacies, not by the government. If you have an extended health plan, often times you can get the co-payment taken off when you get your meds, and thus, if the plan covers %80 of the cost of a prescription (pretty average, although some really fancy health plans cover %100) you just have to pay the 20% to the pharmacy directly, rather than paying for the whole thing and then sending in a claim form with your receipts. If people have no extended health plan and they fall below a certain income level, they can get their meds covered by the government (yeah, birth control too). If they have no health plan but fall above that cut-off, then they pay cash. Oh, and if somebody has a private health plan but that plan will only cover prescriptions up to a certain financial ceiling, there is a mechanism for the government to step in and top up the payment so the person can get their very expensive meds.

I have a fair bit of choice in terms of which doctor I see, certainly much more than an American whose HMO will only allow him to see certain doctors. Possibly because universal healthcare is like one big HMO, but where NOBODY doesn’t have coverage. Yes, there are problems with the damn system, yes there are waiting lists for non-emergency care and non-lifethreatening surgeries, but if your doctor pisses you off you can go to another one without being restricted to the doctors of whom the HMO approves.

And if you are diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness when you go to a doctor, you will always get care. In the US, if you’re unlucky enough to be diagnosed with a serious illness at your first trip to the doctor when you sign onto a health plan, that’s a pre-existing condition, and they don’t have to pay. Which means you’re probably mortgaging your house to get treatment. I have many complaints about Canada’s health care system, but I’d take living in a country where getting seriously ill doesn’t also mean you may end up bankrupt over living in the US any day. Mainly BECAUSE I am appalled that the richest country int he world, which put a man on the moon and spends billions on fighter jets, doesn’t have a public health care system.

If poor women in the US could afford the regular “well woman” check-ups which are a huge part of preventive medicine, and catch medical problems before they become very serious,and maybe if uninsured pregnant American women could go to the OB/GYN on a regular basis over the course of their pregnancy, the US might not have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba. Fucking Cuba, which, may I remind you, is considered by many to be Third World country. You know which developed country on that list had the highest infant mortality rates: Latvia. That’s the only industrialized country in the entire fucking world where more babies die in infancy than in the US. And I had a roommate from Latvia. Trust me, being able to say you’re better at something than Latvia is pretty pathetic. Like an American bobsled team saying they’re better than the team from Jamaica.

Don’t be passive-aggressive. If you could say it, say it. However, nothing in the part of the sentence following “I’m unfamiliar with Canadian-style health care” changes the fact that you’re unfamiliar with Canadian-style health care and that any suppositions you have about whether they make their patients wait for drugs or allow them to buy them in advance are just that, suppositions. Pulled out of your ass, like the “can’t get an MRI in Canada” thing.

But I learned how to be passive-aggressive from the very best! Although I’ve never been under the care of Canadian-style health care, I know bureaucracy firsthand, having battled it all my life. I’m sure it’s substantially similar up north. By the same standards, you are unqualified to talk about first-waver feminists, having not been around about that time.

I’ve found the stats, BTW, on raw numbers of MRI machines. I’d link, but it seems to give your anti-spam fits. I was surprised to learn that as late as 2002, there still was not a single MRI machine in all of Prince Edward Island.

Nor does your citing Raincitygirl’s comment on the Canadian health care system support whatever point it is you’re trying to make. She acknowledges that the system is not perfect, but it won’t bankrupt you and you can get needed emergency care quickly.

Read it again, but without your rose colored glasses. I see a national government monopoly on healthcare that is not properly funded, where there’s no choices. I see people with painful, but not dangerous problems suffering while they wait for healthcare rationing. I see all of her upsides vs. HMOs, being solved by the Health Savings Accounts I advocate. Most of all I see a barely serviceable healthcare system that might be OK for day to day uses, but would fall far short in a true emergency (terror attack, earthquake, Katrina, etc)

You pull out a quote from me about my health plan. I live in America, and I’m insured (on my own dime). There *is* some bean counter deciding how many pills I can have a month. My other option is to be uninsured so that I can pay out of pocket. Oh, yay for choice!

Well, If you happen to take the low dosage non-tri phase type of BC, you might ask your doctor about paying cash for a high dosage cycle, and then using a pill splitter to split the three weeks in half. That should yield 6 weeks of “fill-in” replacements. I found Ogestrel®, at Safeway for $40.99, which makes the additional out-of-pocket cost of $6.83 to not have a period that cycle. You might make that up in sanitary napkins alone. Of course, just like I don’t “know anything” about Canadian healthcare, I also don’t “know anything’ about BC or sanitary napkins, so perhaps you ought to talk to a pro first.

Actually I know a bit about sanitary napkins, because I have some in my first aid kit. They’re clean, individually wrapped, and they are designed to absorb blood. I take a few with me when I backpack, along with some vet-wrap. I also know quite a bit about pill splitters, having used one to save myself a bunch of cash in the past.

I was also suffering fainting spells on the medication. It was a curious position to be in–despite the medication, my blood pressure was high whenever taken in a doctor’s office, and I was becoming dizzy and graying out when going from a sitting to standing position when not in the doctor’s office.

I need to repeat the CT scans after the sprog is born, to make sure that pregnancy didn’t cause any damage and that there wasn’t undetectable but advancing damage when they were first done.

The only possibility that I wasn’t screened for was a pituitary tumor. That was going to be the next step, but when I showed that my at home blood pressure was within norms, (and, for some reason after going through all this shit, I came to trust my GP enough that I did start to exhibit normal blood pressure in her office), they decided not to for the time being.

Looking at that list, I’m glad I have good insurance . . . even if they’re jerking me around and making me cry right now.

high blood pressure in a 25-year-old

hp: I know that this is seriously none of my business, but have you been worked up for secondary causes of hypertension? Even with a family history and a serious white coat hypertension component, this scares me a little.

When I can find docs who want to work WITH me–which my current GP and OB are quite willing to do–things just go so much more smoothly. But I find it very worrying that had I just gone along with the doctor-knows-best attitude of the first office, I’d still be on medicine I didn’t need, and still under the care of a doctor who apparently placed possible fetal risk over my health without even telling me.

I just left a GP too because of this reason. He was wonderful to my husband when he got sick, so I thought I’d see him too for my physical. Apparently this guy acts a bit different to his male patients vs his female ones. I was diagnosed with “irregular excessive heart beats” because I was in a hurry getting to his office and was at aerobic heart rate when I got in. I tried explaining that I had just hiked it from Manhattan to Hoboken on 4 trains and lots of stairs, and he wasn’t buying it.

On top of that, he tried to talk me into cholesterol meds, which ironically are WORSE for a fetus (I’d think). He almost had me on heart meds I don’t need AND cholesterol meds (when diet is just as good), and thyroid as well until that turned out to be a false positive. The guy just likes to prescribe, and give his pharma sales guy some commissions. He could give a flying fuck about fetuses, which I find ironic in the face of all this.

Wow, what a totally cool tumor .

Yikes. No tumor is a cool tumor to have. I have a prolactimona, which may be the same thing Kate has, not sure. Mine is in the pituitary gland and causes an excess secretion of prolactin. And if I do not treat it, I stop ovulating and menstruating.

I actually had a doctor once tell me this would be a great form of birth control. Ya know, cause I wouldn’t ovulate. Which he considered to be the only requirement of birth control. The fact that the side effects made me NOT want to have sex to begin with didn’t bother him (leaking milk from my breasts and loss of libido caused by high levels of prolactin). Or perhaps that’s what he meant by birth control? To leave me with no sex drive? Huh.

Other side effects of this type of tumor, in some patients, is that the abnormal level of hormone can adversely affect bone growth (which is not good before 35), the tumor can grow and press against the optic nerve causing loss of peripheral vision and headaches.

In my case, this tumor is a pre-existing condition which makes private insurance companies hang the phone up on me. My medication, without insurance, costs $600 for each refill. And, because the condition’s side effects are not life-threatening (one doctor told me when I complained about the leaking milk that that was a “cosmetic” concern), some insurance companies don’t like to pay for the meds even if you are insured.