My Single Mom Life

Well the 24 to 48 hours came and went with no call back from the Medicaid specialist for Mark.
They had until 5pm today to call me back and they didn't, so at 9am tomorrow morning, I get to call them again and demand to be put on hold while I wait for the specialist, I will not wait for a call back again.
This is the same kind of crap that I dealt with for 4 and a half years, they stall, they tell you they will call you, they never do, it's just a big game of phone tag with them to try and get any answers.
Ugh.

I did get the call from the neurosurgeon's office though, and this is how that is going to work.
I have to go to the orthopedists office and get all of Mark's films, his xrays and his MRIs, on a disc, and then take them to the neurosurgeon's office and just drop them off.
The neurosurgeon and his team will review the films and if they do think that they can help Mark, they will then call me to set up an appointment to bring him in.
If they don't think that they can help him, they will call me to come back and get the disc and a referral to a different surgeon who they think may be able to help him, but I will also have to get that referral cleared not only by the orthopedist, but by Mark's primary care doctor as well.
Sounds like fun doesn't it?

In order to get our own consultation at a specialist at All Children's Hospital, I have to get Mark's orthopedist to fax the written test results to the specialist's nurse, and she will have the specialist look at them.
But in order to actually see the specialist, I have to convince the primary care doctor to request a consult with this specialist, from Medicaid.
The specialist is out of network, so we would be requesting a consult with a doctor that they do not participate with, and I can guarantee you that Medicaid will deny the request for the consult because this is what happened to me time after time after time.

We also cannot just go see the specialist on our own and pay cash out of pocket for a consultation, a second opinion, because the specialist could get in trouble for seeing a Medicaid patient without their written prior approval for the consult, even if they deny a request for the consult from the primary care doctor, they will not let us pay cash out of our own pockets to see the specialist.
That's just insane to me.

I was talking on the phone to Mindy this afternoon, and she asked me what I thought would/may happen if the health care bill passes for the public option, wouldn't it be just like Medicaid?
I said that I can't be sure, but if it's run like how Medicaid is run, then the public option would be of total non-use to the people who really need it.
Medicaid denies almost every single referral request, they deny consultations, they punish doctors for seeing Medicaid patients who want to pay for consults or appointments with their own money because the doctor and patient didn't get their written approval for a consult even if the patient is going to pay cash for the consult, and they deny surgeries that will greatly improve someone's quality of life and allow them to work, lead full and productive lives, because the surgery would cost more than doing the absolute least expensive option which is usually the absolute last thing that a surgeon can do to keep the patient alive.
They would rather pay for a leg amputation and a wheelchair, than to pay for the surgery that would allow the patient to go back to full time work in 6 months to 1 year.
Medicaid would choose the amputation/wheelchair option even though in the long run, it would cost far more, and it would mean that the patient would be on some type of assistance and government run insurance plan, either Medicaid or Medicare, for the rest of their lives.

If the public option is like Medicare, then people would be taken care of.
Medicare has never denied a single medical procedure, medication, surgery, or referral to any of the gazillion doctors that I have had to see in the 3 and a half, almost 4 years, since becoming approved for Medicare.
Medicaid forces patients to see doctors in their network even if that doctor is completely unqualified or incapable of providing the right kind of care for the patient.
Medicare allows the patient to see whichever doctor or specialist that can provide the right kind of care for the patient so that the patient can get back to a somewhat normal life as quickly as possible.
I have been on both over these last 10 and a half years, and Medicare is far superior to Medicaid, and both are government run medical insurance plans.

What makes them so drastically different?
Medicaid is for poor people, people below a certain income level, and living in poverty.
Medicare is for the elderly and the disabled, people who have worked and paid into the system.
It is clearly obvious to me which one considers the lives of their patients more valuable.

I'm just so angry right now.
I'm angry that I am going to have to fight tooth and nail to try and get Mark treated by the most capable surgeons so that he doesn't end up like me, disabled and in a constant state of pain for the rest of his life.
If they had just allowed me to be treated by the surgeon who could do it back when those first 5 doctors said that I needed to have the surgery immediately, and that this 1 particular surgeon could do it, maybe I wouldn't have ended up like this.
But no.
They made me go see 19 different surgeons, all of whom admitted that they were not capable or qualified to help me.
They wasted 4 and a half years of my life, 4 and a half years of precious time, 4 and a half years while my spine was falling apart at a rapid pace.
They waited and stalled, denied the treatments and surgery that would have prevented my current state.
I knew when my Cobra ran out that I was doomed, I knew it, and I was right.
I do not want that for Mark, he does not deserve to have to wait for years and years to get the surgery that would allow him to work, to live a full and productive life.
They are going to send him through hoop after hoop and expect him to jump through all of them, and fight and claw, and hopefully not end up so discouraged and depressed that he just wants to give up.
He's already feeling like giving up now, he knows what I went through, he knows this isn't going to be easy at all, he knows that he's going to be denied time and again.

The neurosurgeon that we have to take Mark's films on disc to?
He is one of the 19 surgeons that I saw.
He looked at my films, looked at me, and said that he was not qualified or capable of helping me.
Unless the man has become absolutely brilliant in just the last 5 years, he will probably take a look at Mark's films and say the exact same thing.