That was easy

Like any woman, I had heard horror stories of what it's like to have a mammogram. That being the case, I'd never bothered to have one, because....well......I was scared of the whole idea of having one. However, now that breast cancer has hit so close to home, I decided I was long overdue for this necessary procedure. Naturally, I had to find out whether such a thing would be paid for by insurance, since most imaging services can be extremely expensive. Fortunately, my insurance does encourage yearly gynecological health screenings and will pay for them completely, so this being the case, I decided it was high time that I took care of business and made an appointment to have my first annual mammogram. So I went to the Robinson Imaging Center in Kent last night and....I did it! It was so much easier than I could ever have hoped for, it was quick, and the radiologist was an old friend who I have known most of my life! They completely set me at ease and made it a quick, simple and painless procedure. And what was nice that since it was my first time, they gave me a small gift of a rose scented candle and a pink ribbon pin, which I thought was a really sweet gesture. It reminds us that we as women have got to take control of our health and make sure to get regular yearly screenings. And it reassures me as well that in spite of my often crummy health insurance (which is run by a consortium of doctors and hospitals - go figure!), they will gladly pay for such things.

MANAGED CARE - IT DIDN'T WORK
Back in the 1990's, the attempt at health care reform gave us managed care plans in an attempt to rein in runaway health care costs. The whole idea was to put a stop to what some insurers thought were needlessly expensive tests, surgeries and waste in the health care system. Well, I can say in all honesty that it didn't work. It usually results in denial of care when you really need it and insurance wonks making medical decisions instead of doctors and medical professionals. Basically, one can say that it's a failed experiment in health care cost containment. If anything, it's driven health care costs higher because people now wait longer to get medical issues taken care of because they have to jump through so many hoops to get taken care of. By the time they are able to get taken care of, they are so sick that the cost of helping them becomes even more expensive than if they had been able to get taken care of in the first place. Unfortunately, I don't see an end to managed health care systems going away anytime soon. There is so much bureacracy, paperwork and administrative overhead that if we went with a single payer health care system, a lot of folk would suddenly find themselves out of work. Still, I am a strong advocate of single payer health care. Managed correctly, it would significantly improve our rapidly tanking economy and might even give a significant boost to most companies who are currently struggling to pay skyrocketing premiums for their health care plans. Still, the insurance lobby is so powerful that it's going to be a tough battle to overcome their money, power and influence. I wish that it wasn't so, but I am a realist. I know how things work in Washington. Lots of legislators get big bucks from insurance companies, so they have a vested interest in keeping them in their back pockets. In the meantime, those of us stuck in managed care programs are being forced to pay more and more of our own health care costs out of our own pockets as our premiums increase and our coverage decreases. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given what managed care was supposed to do. Asking people to pay for their own health care when it's so expensive is not going to rein in runaway health care costs. If anything, it's going to add to the problem, and if things continue unabated, things will continue to get worse and worse until people just get so fed up that they demand action, and now. The ball's in our court now, so it's up to us to start demanding real change from our lawmakers and legislators, because goodness knows, if they have their way, nothing's going to change. They have too much at stake to change it and we have to be the agents of change. It always happens from the bottom up, not from the top down. History has proven that. Time for us to rise up and demand real change, not just half measures, which is all they are proposing right now. Half measures aren't good enough. Real change now! That's what we need to rise up in record numbers and demand!