If it isn't "Cost Effective" for you to live, due to perceived age, health, or "quality" concerns ... Accounting will decided if it's time for you to die.
-Stoic Joker
Bingo! Ask any patient over 70 how much treatment gets suggested once a doctor learns your age.
Happened to my mother at a walk-in clinic over the holiday. She felt very tired and was having a little difficulty breathing. The doctors at the walk-in didn't offer to do much at all for her
until they discovered (from the billing person
who walked in on my Mom's examination) that my father had sacrificed big time to make sure she would have
excellent medical coverage when she got older.
Once the clinic saw she was privately insured (and covered to the nines) they pulled out all the stops: EKG, chest X-rays, blood tests, actually started
listening to what she was saying...you know the drill.
Before that, they figured she was just another nice little fuzzy-headed 84-year old lady on basic Medicare and the "D" prescription plan. Since little she needed would have been covered under those, they were planning to send her home with instructions to "get plenty of rest and take some aspirin and an over-the-counter cough remedy with an expectorant" for her symptoms.
Didn't these doctors take an oath when they got their licenses?
Pretty sickening. And a pretty common occurrence too, I've been told.
Turned out my mother was in the early stages of a rather nasty pneumonia infection. If it went untreated another few days, she probably would have ended up hospitalized according to her regular doctor when she finally got in to see him the following week. As it was, it took
two prescription tries before the correct antibiotic (Biaxin) was identified for the strain of infection she had.
Good thing she was covered. Many people who aren't, aren't quite so lucky.
