Long, OT, and something for the conservatives

This is posted to the three groups I normally subscribe to, and
decidedly off topic in any of them. However:

My daughter just came home, a week ago from a two month stay in the
hospital. She now has a tracheostomy, and has, in her room, an oxygen
concentrator and nebulizer that she is hooked to, 24 hours a day.
Needless to say, with her birth defects, there is no insurance company
that will touch her, and Medicaid is all she has. She has had a
urostomy for nearly twenty years, the cost of her supplies, the
adhesive wafers to hold the bag and the bags themselves, one box of
each costs $134. That is, six bags and six wafers, no guarantee, they
might last a week, or an hour. Sorry, they're not guaranteed to work.

Medicaid pays a whopping $5, except that the local druggist won't
accept that, even if my daughter pays the rest. He is, of course, a
businessman first, a human second from last, and as he refuses to pay
support for his twin children, a family man last. Above all, he is a
Bush supporter, he's comfortable and has no cares for anyone else,
family or not, except for daddy, who's a lawyer.

It gets worse. Through the years, the help that she has been getting
from various agencies, with toxic tommy as our grovelmore, has
declined to almost nil. They will pay to have her ostomies checked,
ONLY if she is in a nursing home. If someone can explain why it's
possible in a $1000 dollar a day institution, but not possible for
someone to come here once a week for $115, and make any sense, I'd be
very interested in hearing it.

Assistance for me, meaning training on taking care of the
tracheostomy, was exactly zero, nada, none, yet I'm the one that has
to do it, and my daughter is the teacher. Changing the sponges around
it has to be done daily, and suctioning her lungs sometimes has to be
done three times a day, sometimes none. Still, these are supposed to
be sterile proceedures.

Help for me around the house, there is nothing available, and the few
nurses that I've talked to, friends and my sister, tell me that my
limit of ONE HOUR of leaving her alone is stretching it. Yes, it
would be possible to leave her longer, IF I could find someone trained
to do what might have to be done. But, of course, I would have to pay
that person. Out of my social security check. At $115 per hour.

There is no county nurse, that was privatized, and the pansy they sent
out declined to accept her, she has two cats, using them as a reason.
Or an excuse which is more accurate. My daughter and the two cats are
the only ones in her room most of the time. Their other reason, I
smoke. I don't smoke in her room, but, it's still my house and nobody
is going to tell me to go outside in the winter to smoke. Their
reasoning, "fire hazard with the oxygen." Never mind that I have a
gas furnace, gas water heater, gas clothes drier, gas range. Those
are ok, I guess?

Sitting on my front porch are two tanks of LOX, and nobody has shown
me how to use them to refill the portable units. As the portable
units are empty, and I'm not about to go messing with LOX without
someone showing me how, in the last week they have gone from 100% down
to 80%, and we have drawn nothing from them. Medicaid picks up the
cost on that, and it's taxpayer money that is slowly evaporating, with
nobody getting any benefit except the supplier.

When the outer cannula of her trach needs changing, I have no idea of
where to go for that, nobody has any answers there.

Contrast this to the situation when she was born, the county nurse
visiting every three weeks, and if anything was needing attention,
they also took care of it immediately. In 35 years, I have seen our
health care system totally privatized, *******ized, and commercialized
to the point that public health systems are now helpless and useless.
The county nurse disappeared under the reign of ruin of raygun, and I
believe was a deliberate attempt, not an accidental effect. The
fifteen minute visits from the county nurse were of far more value and
far less cost than what exists today, which is nothing. There is no
help for people that are not bad enough to need a nursing home, and I
believe because it doesn't funnel money into the huge and greedy
corporations as a nursing home would. The corporations that now have
what used to be public health jobs are interested only in the money,
they couldn't care less about what happens to people that need only a
little help, there's more money in the mark if they're in a home.

What used to be my linen closet is now storage for medical supplies,
only a very few of which I have any idea of what they're for. The
rest are, as far as I'm concerned, unknowns, meaning waste that the
taxpayer paid for. Merely another corporation raking in the medical
buck and not having to account for what they left. I don't think
we're talking hundreds of dollars, I think it's thousands of dollars.
I have no idea what a medical nasal cannula costs, but I know there
are more than twenty of them, and she breathes through the hole in her
throat. I'm also willing to bet that they aren't in the $5 range,
more like $25.

However, if, by the end of next week the corporation that supplies the
LOX hasn't sent someone out to show me how to use the units, they're
going to be told to take them back, there's no sense in having
something evaporate when it boils down to dollars being totally
wasted. I'm also going to sort through the junk in the linen closet
and if I don't know what it is, it means we don't need it, it's going
back, but I'm also going to furnish human services with a list of what
goes back so they can stop payment for any of it. None of this stuff
is cheap, and nobody has a right to say I have to accept it even at
taxpayer expense. Especially when it's only waste to the taxpayer and
profit to the supplier.

Keep this crap off of RAS

On 04 Sep 2004 14:01:02 GMT, (RHWOODY) wrote:

Keep this crap off of RAS


Wait until it's you or your family. IF the truth hurts you so much,
it makes me even prouder of the EX in EX glider student. Maybe you
like seeing the system raped by suppliers sending everything including
the kitchen sink, most of which is not needed, but I don't. IF nobody
says anything about it, it'll never change, and for change, we're
going to have to dump the GWeeB where he belongs, the bottom of a
garbage pit, preferably on another planet. Venus comes to mind
readily.

wrote:

This is posted to the three groups I normally subscribe to, and
decidedly off topic in any of them. However:

My daughter just came home, a week ago from a two month stay in the
hospital. She now has a tracheostomy, and has, in her room, an oxygen
concentrator and nebulizer that she is hooked to, 24 hours a day.
Needless to say, with her birth defects, there is no insurance company
that will touch her, and Medicaid is all she has. She has had a
urostomy for nearly twenty years, the cost of her supplies, the
adhesive wafers to hold the bag and the bags themselves, one box of
each costs $134. That is, six bags and six wafers, no guarantee, they
might last a week, or an hour. Sorry, they're not guaranteed to work.

Snip far too common story.

It sucks Richard. Here's to hoping in November.

Shawn

On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 11:36:41 -0600, scurry
wrote:

wrote:

This is posted to the three groups I normally subscribe to, and
decidedly off topic in any of them. However:


Snip far too common story.

It sucks Richard. Here's to hoping in November.

I notice the lack of outrage at the waste that I've told of. Maybe it
has something to do with who's getting the benefit of the waste.

wrote in message . ..
On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 11:36:41 -0600, scurry
wrote:

wrote:

This is posted to the three groups I normally subscribe to, and
decidedly off topic in any of them. However:


Snip far too common story.

It sucks Richard. Here's to hoping in November.

I notice the lack of outrage at the waste that I've told of. Maybe it
has something to do with who's getting the benefit of the waste.

Please check the lists of PAC for both sides. Makes no difference!
Money makes the world go round. Don't like it? Move to Utopia, allow
only those that think the way you do in and see how far that culture
goes.Kumbiya yall!

(Larry Johnson) wrote in message . com...

Please check the lists of PAC for both sides. Makes no difference!
Money makes the world go round. Don't like it? Move to Utopia, allow
only those that think the way you do in and see how far that culture
goes.Kumbiya yall!

If you can explain why I shouldn't be disgusted with Medicaid dumping
a few thousand dollars for things I don't need and will just throw
them away, it might be interesting to hear. If there's anything
wrong with thinking that spending a few hundred dollars to keep her at
home instead of in a $1000 a day "facility" makes more sense, I'd like
to hear that too. While you're explaining, tell me why it makes any
sense at all to have two tanks, each 14 inches in diameter and roughly
40 inches tall, of LOX, slowly gassing off, now down to 80% and we
haven't drawn anything out of them, sitting on my porch and nobody has
bothered to show me how to use the damn things. I have no idea how
much they cost, but for them to sit there and just be waste is
criminal, and the tech that left them here is the criminal, or maybe
the guy that told him to leave them. I'm sorry this isn't water, it's
a highly dangerous substance to handle, and without someone showing me
how, I'm not going to touch it. If the people at Aire Liquide take
precautions, and they're professionals, there's no way I'm going to
touch it.

And it's not just MY dollars, it's YOUR dollars that are flowing to
the supplier for NOTHING of any use to me now.

Get back the county nurse, employed and paid by the county, and get
rid of the reaganized, *******ized and dehumanized corporate nurses
that we now have, watch the cost drop and services improve.

IF you can read the list of waste I've put there, and I'm only one of
thousands(?) Millions(?) and not get ****ed off, you're only a
republican.

And what you're saying is that I should watch someone rip the system
into bankruptcy and keep my mouth shut. That would be an admission of
total cowardice.

(Lennie the Lurker) wrote in message . com...
(Larry Johnson) wrote in message . com...

Please check the lists of PAC for both sides. Makes no difference!
Money makes the world go round. Don't like it? Move to Utopia, allow
only those that think the way you do in and see how far that culture
goes.Kumbiya yall!

If you can explain why I shouldn't be disgusted with Medicaid dumping
a few thousand dollars for things I don't need and will just throw
them away, it might be interesting to hear. If there's anything
wrong with thinking that spending a few hundred dollars to keep her at
home instead of in a $1000 a day "facility" makes more sense, I'd like
to hear that too. While you're explaining, tell me why it makes any
sense at all to have two tanks, each 14 inches in diameter and roughly
40 inches tall, of LOX, slowly gassing off, now down to 80% and we
haven't drawn anything out of them, sitting on my porch and nobody has
bothered to show me how to use the damn things. I have no idea how
much they cost, but for them to sit there and just be waste is
criminal, and the tech that left them here is the criminal, or maybe
the guy that told him to leave them. I'm sorry this isn't water, it's
a highly dangerous substance to handle, and without someone showing me
how, I'm not going to touch it. If the people at Aire Liquide take
precautions, and they're professionals, there's no way I'm going to
touch it.

And it's not just MY dollars, it's YOUR dollars that are flowing to
the supplier for NOTHING of any use to me now.

Get back the county nurse, employed and paid by the county, and get
rid of the reaganized, *******ized and dehumanized corporate nurses
that we now have, watch the cost drop and services improve.

IF you can read the list of waste I've put there, and I'm only one of
thousands(?) Millions(?) and not get ****ed off, you're only a
republican.

And what you're saying is that I should watch someone rip the system
into bankruptcy and keep my mouth shut. That would be an admission of
total cowardice.

Please notice the phrase"both sides". That's the problem. Until we as
a country think less about right/left and more right/wrong business
will be as usual

(Lennie the Lurker) wrote in message . com...
(Larry Johnson) wrote in message . com...

Please check the lists of PAC for both sides. Makes no difference!
Money makes the world go round. Don't like it? Move to Utopia, allow
only those that think the way you do in and see how far that culture
goes.Kumbiya yall!

If you can explain why I shouldn't be disgusted with Medicaid dumping
a few thousand dollars for things I don't need and will just throw
them away, it might be interesting to hear. If there's anything
wrong with thinking that spending a few hundred dollars to keep her at
home instead of in a $1000 a day "facility" makes more sense, I'd like
to hear that too. While you're explaining, tell me why it makes any
sense at all to have two tanks, each 14 inches in diameter and roughly
40 inches tall, of LOX, slowly gassing off, now down to 80% and we
haven't drawn anything out of them, sitting on my porch and nobody has
bothered to show me how to use the damn things. I have no idea how
much they cost, but for them to sit there and just be waste is
criminal, and the tech that left them here is the criminal, or maybe
the guy that told him to leave them. I'm sorry this isn't water, it's
a highly dangerous substance to handle, and without someone showing me
how, I'm not going to touch it. If the people at Aire Liquide take
precautions, and they're professionals, there's no way I'm going to
touch it.

And it's not just MY dollars, it's YOUR dollars that are flowing to
the supplier for NOTHING of any use to me now.

Get back the county nurse, employed and paid by the county, and get
rid of the reaganized, *******ized and dehumanized corporate nurses
that we now have, watch the cost drop and services improve.

IF you can read the list of waste I've put there, and I'm only one of
thousands(?) Millions(?) and not get ****ed off, you're only a
republican.

And what you're saying is that I should watch someone rip the system
into bankruptcy and keep my mouth shut. That would be an admission of
total cowardice.

Please read phrase "both sides". Until we as a nation decide that
right/wrong is better than right/left we will have problems. With
everything "middle men" and others have a piece of the pie. I don't
see either candidate or party living in single family dwellings that
cost less than their annual earnings nor see them at the clinic
waiting for their health care. Just pointing out that neither REPS or
DEMS can claim halos or wings on this. As to cowerdice, remember we
can do it or let the government do it for us. Your choice.
Oh, I agree with the good'ole days- 'cept I prefer penicillin to
castor oil.

On 5 Sep 2004 09:03:22 -0700, (Larry Johnson) wrote:


Please read phrase "both sides". Until we as a nation decide that
right/wrong is better than right/left we will have problems.

Until you get the right wing to finally realize that letting business
have their way without any regulation is stupid, you will continue to
have waste such as I have described. There are limits on what my
daughter can order, apparently there are no limits on what a
corporation can decide, in their "infinite wisdom", that she needs.
Even though I don't have the apparatus that most of the crap they sent
goes with.

Someone, somewhere, sitting in a corporate office, decided that the
LOX was more "cost efficient", and I'm betting that it's more
efficient to them, and $445 a month for them, instead of what the 25
cu/ft tanks bring them. I don't have a bill for the concentrator yet,
but I'm willing to bet that they can be purchased for just about what
the monthly rent is going to be. If so, I might be $1500 poorer for
it, but I see no sense in paying someone the purchase price every
month, I'd rather buy two of them, one in use and the other in standby
until needed. The only problem is that the doctor works for the same
company that supplies them, and you have to have a prescription to buy
one. WHich is only one result of the ruin of raygun deciding that
business can be trusted. They have never been worthy of trust and
never will be.

There is a system to the republican side, if you disagree with
anything, such as would actually HELP people, remove all the supply
side controls, and bankrupt it as quickly as possible.

And the LOX tanks are down to 75%, we still haven't drawn anything
from them, and from the company, we get a deafening silence. While I
sit with two potential bombs on my front porch.

Oh, I agree with the good'ole days- 'cept I prefer penicillin to
castor oil.

Penicillin and cyanide have the same effect on me. Either one means I
die.