aditya reading stories: 01/01/2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Wife's bad credit doesn't have to ruin her husband's

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Medical Debts Put Patients at Risk of Financial Collapse

Finally, he learned that his life fighting the war or maybe it just was not too difficult. In December she finished her chemotherapy, she was fired. "" More than six years due to changes in business operations, written by his employer, "we can no longer hold his position open"

It arrived nine days before Christmas.

"I am a good person," 58-year-old Giordano said in an interview, crying. "I worked hard. Enough to have cancer?"

U.S. health care crisis in hospital emergency rooms where care for uninsured people is not to wait.

In less than a year, Giordano lost her health and her job. Now, she is afraid she will lose her good credit and have health coverage.

Alone in the night hours, he said he thinks about giving.

Giordano had health insurance during his illness. He was treated and refused to beg is not. He loves the surgeon and oncologist and nurses whose care he is expecting his first grandchild, born in July will give many more good days.

But it could be financially ruined. In this country, people can break if they get sick.

For many patients of a cancer diagnosis "is a devastating double whammy," Blair Horner, vice president of the American Cancer Society, "for their health and their finances potentially catastrophic news is bad news."

Despite the passage of national health care reform in 2010, as Giordano conditions to protect the people have not yet implemented many of the changes.

Without a salary, he can not expand coverage. She does not know how she will pay her hospital debt.

And then to the esophagus, irritating "activity", recently seen on a PET scan. Her doctors say it should be biopsied, Giordano says she can not afford the copay and does not want to hear more bad news.

"With all this anxiety and stress of chemotherapy How does my body?" She said.

"The bottom line is that people can not get sick. They can not get cancer."

Each week, more than +31000 people are diagnosed with cancer at the national level, according to the American Cancer Society.

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Giordano was diagnosed with Stage 2 lung cancer when the doctor stuck a lump in her throat that seemed to always ordered a scan. Because he's short, low-orbiting imaging machine and accidentally caught a picture of a tumor at the top of her lungs.

He was stunned. After that, he did not find her car in the parking lot and does not know whom to call, his son or daughter. Five years ago her father, her husband, had died of the same disease.

In July, Hackensack University Medical Center, a surgeon removed part of his left lung, she was in hospital for six days. After his recovery, cancer-fighting drugs through a portal in his chest pushed each week from August to December.

These treatments extend life for thousands of cancer patients. In 2000, for patients with lung cancer five year survival rate 25 percent higher than it was 20 to 25 years ago. Giordano said he was a 30 percent chance of living five years - more than twice what was told her husband. Both of them were smokers.

But treatment is expensive. Chemotherapy and / or recurring charges for weeks of daily radiation - laboratory work and to check the progress combined with copayments for imaging - Many cancer patients buried in medical debt.

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"One of the most expensive diseases," said Barbara Hoffman, Cancer Survivorship and a law professor at Rutgers Newark founder and chairwoman of the National Alliance, said the cancer. "This results in a lot of personal financial stress and can lead to personal bankruptcy."

Even when patients have coverage, they are "not protected from high out-of-pocket costs when they are diagnosed with cancer can be," Kaiser Family Foundation and a 2009 report by the American Cancer Society. Or suspend or abandon life-saving treatment with high insurance premiums, the cost of care for patients need to pile debt they are forced to pay for.

"Having the use of insurance increases the efficiency of care for people," said Mark Rukavina, Medical Debt and Access Project, a Boston-based health care advocacy group's executive director, said an expert. "The good news is that they get attention, but the bad news is that it is unaffordable."

As medical costs rise, employers the burden of higher premiums, copayments and co-workers have shifted through insurance.

"Cadillac health plans are much higher than in the days" of Washington Center for the Study of Health System Change, said Peter Cunningham.