[944Larry]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

That's what I overheard the nurse say yesterday, "His mother is dying, he has to be mad at someone."
Yeah, I'm angry.
The medicare/health insurance mess is different it every state, of course. There are some states where it is worse than in Ohio, but Ohio is pretty bad. I can’t believe they complain about costs and waste money so profligately.
My mother is, well, there is no way to sugar coat it, she’s dying of cancer. She was moved from the hospital to one of the best nursing homes in Ohio a few days ago. For some idiotic bureaucratic reason she is officially there for rehabilitation – medicare/health insurance won’t pay for simply taking care of her until she dies, even though everyone knows she has rapidly advancing, incurable cancer. So they pay for a physical therapist to come into her room twice a week and tell her to raise her arms two or three times. That’s it. If he doesn’t come in and sign off that she’s getting PT, they’ll throw her out of the place. Yesterday we found out that on Friday they are paying to have an ambulance take her 35 miles to see her regular GP. Yes - she’s been seen multiple times by her oncologist, radiologists, hospitalists, nutritionists, cancer radiation therapy doctor guy whatever the hell he’s called, and probably more in the hospital and has a GP who sees her every day at the care facility, but she wants to be taken to her doc, so they’re paying for two medical technicians and a big ass ambulance to spend half a day taking her to yet another GP. I suppose this would be acceptable if they were showering unlimited money on her, but they will not pay for anything after she’s been there 100 days. Anything. Granted, she’s not expected to live 100 days, but it makes no sense to me to pay for every ridiculous thing they can think up for 100 days and then cut the “client” off completely. How can they call that good care?
Our health care system is so wasteful, inefficient and just plain f-ed up it’s a wonder anyone survives it. And this is the best in the world??
End of rant. Sorry.

Pat-I don't think you need to apologize for a rant after going through all this. I think you deserve one.