Our COBRA premiums were $1300 per month. Now we’re on Kaiser Permanente, about $800 a month after Covered California subsidy. Family of three (two 40ish parents, 1 kid).
Both hospital systems I worked for allowed other systems to share the patient database. In order to do that you had to set-up a number systems and user access but essentially you could share medical data within a close system removing most reasons to use physical paper or faxes. In addition, the system has Read Only modes that help with not only downtimes but also allows outside offices to access clinical data but not alter it.
There are a lot of things we can do today.
It’s not illegal to send someone a text if the patient asks for it. Patients typically sign up for reminders, it’s not forced on them.
I get texts and emails from my healthcare provider, and I have access to most of my medical records online (they use EPIC). It seems pretty great, from a patient perspective. As long as I stay in-network, every healthcare provider I see seems well integrated into the system. And I basically have to stay in-network (it’s an EPO), or I have zero coverage ;)
My employer knocks out about $10k/year on health care stuff alone. Because I’m a grant funded employee, they also pay lots of stupid fees to the university for the privilege of employing me… I suspect total costs paid on my behalf are about half my take home pay or more. It’s some goofy shit
I can get hospital records (for the one we’re affiliated with.) I was thinking more private offices. I just assumed we had some sort of equivalent to email where you send to [email protected] and you receive the data. Guess in a few years.
These guys website have more than you ever wanted to know about the complexity of transmitting data in HIPPA complaint manner.
I 100% agree with this. Hawaii is generally ranked the healthiest state (slipped #2 this year) and consequently healthcare is one of the few things in this place less expensive than the rest of the country. My friends’ asphalt company pays most of her workers $15-$25/hour and spend $820/month for very good low deductible insurance.
I’ll check to see if that amount shows up in their paycheck. But it probably doesn’t matter much, because I doubt the amount really registers with most employees.
One healthcare reform, I could really get behind is to incentive employers to work with their employees to lower healthcare cost. It would have to be a win win so for ever $10 of lower health care cost the employee would get say $6-$8 and the employers the rest. The government could help through a combination of carrots and stick. The obvious stick is to tax employe provided health insurance.
So the Murray/Alexander bill that was going to help shore up exchanges to try to keep premiums to a reasonable cost?
Yeah. That’s probably never going to pass now.
With Corker flipping on the tax bill, the GOP doesn’t need Collins – who demanded Murray/Alexander come to a vote. So that’s going to wither on the vine.
If you thought premiums were high in 2017…
It’s not even remotely the same thing (including that HIPAA doesn’t apply), but I had to take my cat to an emergency vet several years back because my normal vet wasn’t open. They gave me a thumb drive with all the data to bring to my vet when they opened the next week. Sitting at home, I was curious so I plugged it into my PC and found it was proprietary software which required a portal login.
Unrelated aside; did you know that cats can absorb toxins from cleaners into their bloodstream straight through their paws? That was a learning experience for me (cat wound up being fine and living to a ripe, old age)
If you mean physicians who send to the bigger health systems like the hospitals near them, they also have access. I don’t do a lot with the charts themselves, but there is some sort of restriction so they’re typically only looking at their patient data and not say the whole database. These are physicians not owned by the health system hosting the data. My personal provider does this. She is not part of the lab she sends to but she can pull up the labs from there anytime… so can I.
Wait what cleaners? My sister is a clean freak and has cats. This matters!
I want to know too. I try not to keep anything toxic around pets.
Also, vets send to labs, but pets do not get individual account there. We don’t sign in Fluffy 123, someone’s last name as a patient. I assume vets keep good records though, for along time in their system.
It was one of the cleaners (some additive) I used to steam clean my carpet. The carpet was still wet for a time, while my cat was wandering around. He started getting very weak and vomited. He couldn’t lift himself up after a bit, and I made a beeline for the local pet ER. They diagnosed it as poisoning pretty quickly, gave him a bunch of stuff I’d never remember the name of, and talked to me about this aspect of cats that I never knew; their “ability” to absorb stuff (if it’s liquid) through their paws. It doesn’t even require grooming (which is a more common way for them to ingest bad stuff from their fur, etc.; spilled garlic powder is apparently infamous) to do the deed.
Ever since, I’ve been extremely careful as to what cleaners I use. Method™ stuff is normally pretty good, for what it’s worth.
Most my cleaners these days are greener or Dawn… the carpet cleaner is probably just whatever bissell or hoover had on sale. Do you remember the ingredient that was the issue?
I don’t, unfortunately - too many years have passed (Kuda, my cat, passed away at the age of 17 four years ago and this event was a few years before that). I believe it was Bissell, however, in one of their add-on optional cleaners (not the “base” cleaner).
Now I just research pet-safe stuff before I bring it into the home. If I can’t find a credible declaration one way or another, I don’t get it.
Well thank you for the warning!
Always happy to spread the word! Our furry family members need all the help we can give them.
So I did more digging and it looks like the closest thing available now is a “Health Insurance Exchange” (State/Federal funded), which is also proprietary. New York seems to have a large one, so I will check it out.
It probably won’t pass, but is there a good online article somewhere that describes what exactly Murray/Alexander does to shore up Obamacare?
And also, is there still a chance that will pass? Even a small one?
And what’s going on with CHIP, the Children’s Healthcare Program? Democrats are going to take a stand on that or filibuster the budget, right?
“If you’re looking for monsters, you won’t find them at YouCaring.com or any of the other crowdfunding sites that are rising to fill the ever-widening cracks in the American health care system. It’s just that the marketplace of compassion, which is what crowdfunding sites amount to, produces winners and losers like any other marketplace. America is becoming a country so free that everyone must beg to survive, and most will not beg well enough.”