Just need to vent...

Yes - and the brokers, once they have your money won't even pick up the phone to talk to you when you become frustrated with the actual insurance company. Well - when the policy ends next year - then they'll talk to you.
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Dup

 

I read a book entitled Medicare Demystified by Ronald Kahan MD. I read it when I was 64 to prepare for Medicare.

It is written by a retired Family Practice Doctor and discusses the difference between a Medicare Advantage Plan and a Medigap Plan with a Plan D. It also discusses Medicare Part A and B in detail
It also helps you pick which plan is best for your individual situation.
The doctor wrote this book from the perspective of helping his patients navigate the Medicare landscape to get the care they needed.

It is a wonderful resource to help people make the decision on what is best for them. It has been invaluable to me in navigating the Medicare Health Landscape.

I have had some experience with Socialized Medicine in England while in the service, and they can keep it - I for one would want no part of it. The thought of the government making Health Care decisions for me and determining my eligibility for end of life medical care is not enticing.

 

Those decisions are being made for people right now by impenetrable for-profit companies.

It's been a number of years since one of those was out to kill me (the only reason they failed was the condition I had turned out to be not what they thought it was), but back while they were, their "customer service" phone representatives had a scheme where everybody's name was Krystal. I could spend an hour or two discussing the situation and then ask for the rep's name to keep in my notes, and it would be Krystal, so the next time I had to call back I would ask for Krystal and get "sure, putting you through" and some person with an unmistakably different voice who knew nothing at all about the case and it would be back to square one.

I have never, ever, even once, dealt with a government agency that had that kind of in-your-face opacity built in. In most cases, I can go to a public-record directory or org chart and find the actual name and title of the person I'm dealing with. There can be times that makes a pretty important difference.

 

I joined "Scan" for my upcoming medical needs. Keeps everything in place as it was under my wife's plan. Oh, and I lost my mind when they brought in Jimmy "JJ" Walker to do a commercial!! Really? Come on now............!

 

A year ago, I got an urgent call from sis because dad wanted to switch to Joe Namath's plan, as seen on TV. Since I had already needed to learn something about Medicare because my spouse is of that age, I was the default "family expert". Dad is well beyond being able to understand it.

The matter was resolved when I learned that the product Namath was shilling for is a Medicare Advantage plan that doesn't reach dad's community. In fact, no Advantage plan covers that geography, so all his favorite providers are "out of network". For such a plan, he'd have to drop them all, and travel almost 90 minutes to reach a place that has a qualifying network, for every non-emergency medical visit. Due to his age and condition, he has a planned medical visit every month, plus a not insignificant number of unplanned visits. No deal.

Captain Kirk? Or Denny Crane?

 

This kind of ties in to your posts elsewhere about corporations all being good.

It's obviously far better for a profit-driven corporation to be making your healthcare decisions for you. Because corporations are lovely. I saw one sponsor a charity once. And the charity wasn't even in the same country as the company's headquarters in the British Virgin Islands. Now that's generous.

 

We have an easy thing to work out whether a healthcare provider is "out of network".

Is it in Australia?

If yes, then it is in network.

If not, then it is out of network. Unless it's in a country with a reciprocal healthcare cover scheme (New Zealand, UK, the EU, quite a lot of other places). Then it is in network.

 

The way the government makes these decisions is incredibly complex. It comes down to this:

"Will it make the patient better?"

If the answer is yes, you'll get the treatment. If it's no, you won't.

The way a corporation makes the decision is simple:

"Can we get out of paying for this?"

If no, you might get the treatment.

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I completely understand the benefits of private healthcare. It provides income for insurance companies, media companies, lawyers, tax-avoidance accountants, debt collectors and many other people. It's a social good.

 

Have a good day

 

Sometimes the things being vented about really do need to be nuked from orbit.

Just to be sure.

 

I'm due for a rewatch.

 

Me too. Aliens was the inflection point after which series jumped the shark. Or whatever that thing was.

 

A great movie. I was a teenager then; I did not discover it until it hit cable TV a year-ish after the theater. But when I did see it... wow.

Cameron figured out exactly the right expansion ratio of the universe formed by 'Alien' and like a great motorcycle, used that power curve to provide a heck of a good ride through his own script.

After that it got super weird.

 

The first two really are brilliant. And they stand re-watching now, because the special effects still work and the storyline is so terrifying that it wouldn't really matter even if those effects were a bit shonky.

 

They also show how to write for female characters; don't focus on them being girls, but a person. Ripley was male in the script.

 

That's very true.

Who'd have thought that this would still be an issue nearly 40 years later?

 

I had not known that!

So, how much credit can a writer get for knowing how to write for female characters, if it happened because the writer was writing for a male character?