LogFAQs > #925874895

Me and my wife worked all of our lives, to the point of not being able to take vacations. One time we actually did schedule a cruise out of Florida (maybe 6-7 years into our marriage), we had 2 years to use it, but were unable to do so because of work in all that time (we gave it to friends).

My wife became ill in 2010, and developed necrotizing fascitice in 2011. She spent weeks in ICU after that and then another week or so at Saint Luise hospital in Gilroy. By the end, the 1 million dollar limit on our health insurance, which we had been paying towards forever was up.

She got transfered to a very cheap and not good hospital called Kindred in San Leandro. The hospital had closed down 1 floor, and was severly under staffed (nurses had to cover twice as many rooms as normal). There was no long term facility to take care of her either, so I had to stay home to do so.

We lived in California, after the insurance ran our, we got put on medicare. Actually in some ways this was better as the insurance we paid for, fought over anything she needed, at least medicare covered most medical neccesities.

It didn't though, cover prescriptions, or at least not all of it. Instead it covered 80% while we covered 20% of the first $3000 or so, then we covered 80% and they covered 20% of the next 4 or 5k (don't remember the exact numbers) then it kicked into catastrophic coverage or something and covered 95%.

It was still over $9000 a year just in perscription costs for us.

So yeah, our health coverage system sucks. If we had medicare instead of private insurance at first, my wife would probably have gotten better in months, instead of years. She would not have been sent to Kindred where they botched her surgery (to close a small wound she had from the necrotising, they ended up making a huge one all the across her tummy and half of her back, which took over 2 years to close, with me packing it constantly the whole time).

Before going to kindred, in just 2 weeks at Saint Luise, she was already standing and starting to move again (Without even having the small wound closed). After going into kindred, she did not stand again for 2 years.

For profit insurance is a nightmare, it's cruel, it's evil and it's inefficient.

We fought, hard, for 4+ years to get her to recover, to first get her sitting, then standing, then using a wheel chair. We battled to get her into a pool in the back yard and recover her strength and when we did, we moved to Washington. She was so happy to be up and around, we had tons of plans for our future.

Then her kidneys started to act up. She had to get dialysis, so I could not keep her home and take care of her. The nursing home/recovery place she was at, did not do a good job keeping her dry etc, and she developed sores all over her back. I didn't see them for two weeks as I was the one pulling her towards me, while they changed the dressing underneath her. When I did I was furious. I took care of her myself for years, without any problems, but a full staff was not able to prevent really bad sores in just 2 weeks.

Meanwhile the hospital was so full because of a flue epidemic in our area that they couldn't take any more patients, they even had a full satalite branch they had set up. It was the only place nearby to get dialysis. We eventually had to send her to Good Samariton hospital in Oregon, but it was too late. She developed an infection on her heart and passed away. There was NO reason for that to happen, she was in no danger at all, if she had gotten the dyalisis she needed. She could have been home in a few weeks at most.

Our Heath Care SYSTEM SUCKS.
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We are 4 oreos from Heaven!!!!