Guaranteed Healthcare

My mother, at age 72, was admitted in the hospital in Florida with heart pain. They discontinued her diuretic and during her first night, suffered CHF. While there, she complained of tremendous pain in her shoulder. No OTC meds broke the pain. They x-rayed it and prescribed ketorolac (Torodol) injection, and orally after discharge, along with her other meds (including furosemide).

Two weeks later, she was re-admitted with chest pain. Despite our family's plea to maintain or adjust her furosemide (Lasix), the doctors did not prescribe any diuretic. Once again, she went in CHF. Her continued complaint of shoulder pain was dismissed. The doctors insisted she was looking for sympathy. Once stabilized, she was sent home to stay at my sister's house.

At that time, I was employed at a teaching hospital. To bypass her HMO's requirement of approved hospitals, I took my mother to my employer's ER in the guise that she was having chest pains while we "were out on a drive" and it was "the nearest hospital". The ER docs were alarmed that mom had been discharged from the "approved" hospital in the first place. They put in a call to her insurer, which decided that mom was to be discharged immediately and driven 30 miles to the "approved" hospital. To my hospital's credit, they refused to discharge until they believed she was stable enough.

The insurer finally relented to an overnight stay. The ER docs also believed mom's shoulder complaint and dosed her on Morphine. Mom shoulder was X-rayed. A call was immediately made to the "approved" hospital for her medical records. To shorten this story, my mother had lung cancer. Her doctor knew it. The "approved" hospital and their treating doctors knew it. The insurer knew it. In fact, they knew it for over a year! Yet they never told my mother, nor did they tell my sister or me!

Once the cat was out of the bag, the insurer could not do enough for my mother. They practically rolled out the red carpet for her. After a week's stay at my hospital, they airlifted her to a good, but "approved" hospital. She opted to fight the cancer, and they paid for it. They then paid for Hospice to allow my mom to die with her dignity and somewhat pain-free at my sister's home. She passed away about 2 months after the proper diagnosis was given.

This current administration, and their 'salt-of-the-earth' constituents talk mighty big about being pro-life, and certainly made Terri Schiavo a huge right-to-live debacle; yet it is these same people who protect, embrace, and promote the health-care industrial complex that decided to play God with my mother. It surely answered my question as to why the furosemide was discontinued. They needed her to die. In mom's case, if she had died as planned, no autopsy would have been done, and no one would have known about the undisclosed and untreated cancer. Mom affected their bottom-line. If mom had died from their-induced CHF, no one would have been the wiser.

In reality, the health-care insurers not only play God, they practice in a form of murder. They get away with it. This is a story about just one of our elders. I do not want to begin to imagine about all the others. Our healthcare providers must be allowed to perform their jobs without being hindered by the For-Profits. Healthcare is about prevention and treatment, nothing else. I wanted to send mom's story to Michael Moore, but just could not do it. I am hoping I have articulated it well enough to be understood.

How would Lynne Cheney and her children feel if Dad was shuffled off to a room, purposely kept off a drug, destined to suffer Cardiac Heart Failure? How would Lynne and the kids feel if Dad was also suffering God-awful bone pain because the insurance company did not want to pay for lung cancer treatment? How would anyone with a conscience feel?