As a wise man said, political power grows out of a strongly-worded letter.
It's shit like this that makes me understand that money is fake, stupid, and destructive. Medicine should have ZERO private influence. Health, physical therapy, healing in general, all that stuff should be a public good we all invest in and receive the benefits from. Doctors should work with patients and that should be it. Why the fuck is there a third party even in the room?
Leper: Help me messiah!
Jesus: I heal you.
Health Insurance: Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
So fucking evil.
If you've never had chemo, nausea is one of the most common side effects. People develop a pavlovian response to just seeing the chemo bag (I've seen it). People can even get nauseous just driving by the cancer centre. Zofran/ondansetron is one of the most common antiemetics pre-chemo meds and it works pretty fucking good, sometimes they go up to Aprepitant for chemo cause it can still make you super nauseous
I had a specific sandwich the morning of an infusion, 5+ years out I genuinely can't think of that sandwich without getting nauseous and I haven't been back to that restaurant since
I had 4 rounds of chemo over 10 weeks back in the 00s and I still get a little nauseous when I think about some of the videogames that I was playing between treatments
I have nausea for various reasons and zofran is a literal lifesaver. Amazing medicine
"Insurance" is evil. It might work if it worked as people think it does (A loss occurs -> you get paid for it). But it can never work like that because even with many individuals paying into the system more then they'll ever get back, and even with their ability to invest whatever they haven't had to pay out, Capital must seek the greatest return. Pressure must be applied. Only a socialized insurance system will ever work close to the ideal. Everyone should want it, it would lower EVERYONE'S commitment, pay out more to those who need it, and be less likely to collapse itself every time anything major happened. But nope, instead mass social murder all so a few people can be millionaires.
Shocked there hasn't been ANY pushback from people on insurance. I haven't met anyone with a good experience. Even the most ideal experience came after the company paid out, AFTER legal action was threatened/taken. Everyone else has horror stories from death to living in poor conditions after a house fire. Insurance agents in general should consider themselves lucky there hasn't been more of this.
the whole point of insurance is distributed risk, so the largest pool is the most stable and effective. or the theoretically infinite pool of sovereign debt, i.e. insurance provided by the state.
but if you can't issue your own currency, the next best thing is the largest pool you can get and having it run by member-owners as a non-profit cooperative association. because there is no reason to do anything but cover the administrative costs of the insurance pool. the phenomenon of private, for-profit insurance is anathema to logic. it means the insurance is a scam being run by investor-owners who are extracting value from the pool.
it is ludicrous that it is not banned, even by adam smith type liberals. under late capitalism, insurance corporations are among the most powerful and massive capital formations yet, rivaled only by finance and real estate.
I am amazed day by day that there has yet to be any doctors that have gone full Rambo against a health insurance company
What happens if the doctor gives the kid the meds anyway?
Some entity has to be on the hook for procurement and administration of the drug, etc... this is true even after the revolution I think. Hopefully what happened in this case was the doc had their clinic write it off but idk
A lot of these meds are cheap like borscht. Zofran costs cents per pill. I've administered 50 ml minibags that cost $10K to the hospital, but most simple meds like this are cheap. It costs crazy amounts in America mostly because of yalls' crazy private insurance system and the arms race between billers and insurance
yeah. and when you think about the total drug cost of an entire chemo regimen it's even less defensible, somehow
The hospital won't have a lot on hand, they do for once or twice but eventually diversion gets noticed if it happens over and over. Depending on what they need, they might have to get it prescribed and have it filled at a pharmacy - some pharmacists and some doctors will get samples which can cover people (my ex used to get their psych meds from a psych with a shitload of samples). In this case, they might be taking Zofran before a chemo cycle to help with the nausea and might be getting it through a pharmacy rather than at a hospital.
Nurses sometimes slip em meds but that counts as practicing medicine without a license if they don't have an order or a prescription (Ive given plenty of left over ventolin puffers or liquid oral vitamin d during discharge, cant give it to anyone else and they have a perscription for it otherwise its going in the trash). Doctors don't generally give any medications, just the orders for them.
