Tag: aging and medications

  • Only a pawn in their game [B. Dylan]

    Why is that “health” care companies feel they have the right to scam Medicare clients and all others?

    Why don’t they do health care insuring [and assuring] and not “pick-your-pocket” and “damn-the-consequences” type of behavior?

    From the Sunday New York Times

    October 7, 2007
    Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans
    By ROBERT PEAR

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.

    The problems, described in 91 audit reports reviewed by The New York Times, include the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores….The audits document widespread violations of patients’ rights and consumer protection standards. Some violations could directly affect the health of patients — for example, by delaying access to urgently needed medications. [emphasis mine – LD]

    Full article here HERE

    Call me whatever – but I’d rather have the government doing health care than these greedy, out-to-scam-everyone corporate types whose only interest is the bottom line and their shareholders.

    The people buying the insurance? We are just pawns in their game. And I have seen the “game” both as a provider and as an insured! Believe me – insurance companies are out for your money – not your health!

  • Here we go again – again

    Another of those “beware what you put in your body ” warnings..

    Now we learn from a Canadian study that antidepressants double the risk of bone fracture…in whom? people over 50!

    I can’t find all the statistics but every older person I know was put on an antidepressant for some reason. I’m thinking back to when my own mother broke her hip and in the rehab center the aide kept trying to get her to take her “happy pills.” My mom, not being stupid, asked if it was an antidepressant and was told it was..so why call it a happy pill? It was not making my mother happy that they tricked her into it as “one of the meds she was supposed to take.”

    She refused to take that pill…now I wonder how many older people with broken body parts are regularly given antidepressants? and what is it doing to the healing of the recently broken bones and what future jeopardy are these already vulnerable seniors exposed to?

    When will the medical profession, the hospitals, the rehab centers, and nursing homes learn to respect older people and stop medicating them for what seems to be the benefit of the staff – not the patient..

    So beware of who is asking yo to take what meds these days…Ask what the long term consequences are and exactly why a certain drug is being prescribed.