We’re in the midst of significant health care challenges no generation has encountered before. U.S. health care spending continues to increase at an unsustainable rate. The cost of care for a typical American family of four covered by an employer-sponsored health plan in 2017 was $26,994 according to the Milliman Medical Index.
On any given day, as many as 400 patients go through the doors of the emergency department at Community Regional Medical Center in Downtown Fresno. It is the only Level 1 Trauma center between Los Angeles and Sacramento. But, not everyone heading to the emergency room is dealing with a life-threatening illness.
As physicals go, it was the most thorough I’d ever gotten. My new primary care doctor is a “concierge” doctor. Much like small-town doctors years ago, he isn’t paid by a third-party insurance firm. He’s paid by me, directly, at a reasonable $115 monthly.
The letter Grand Rapids-area resident Hedda Martin, 60, received delivered devastating news. Her impending heart transplant candidacy wouldn't move forward, the letter stated, because she didn't have the cash to pay for post-surgery medication. "The committee is recommending a fundraising effort of $10,000," the letter said, signed by a clinical transplant coodinator at Spectrum Health Richard DeVos Heart and Lung Transplant Clinic in Grand Rapids.
More people could have been shot at Mercy Hospital last Monday if not for the quick action by police and the preparedness of hospital staff, who only recently had reviewed how to respond to an active shooter, experts say. In the Nov. 19th incident, which unfolded over minutes, three people — Dr. Tamara O’Neal, pharmacy resident Dayna Less and Chicago Police Officer Samuel Jimenez — were killed by O’Neal’s ex-fiancé, Juan Lopez. Lopez died in a shootout with police.
Desperate for relief after years of agony, Jim Taft listened intently as his pain management doctor described a medical device that could change his life. It wouldn’t fix the nerve damage in his mangled right arm, Taft and his wife recalled the doctor saying, but a spinal-cord stimulator would cloak his pain, making him “good as new.”