Minutus

In 2006, at the urging of a patient who had referred many paying clients, I decided to do one pro-bono case a month for a year as she had many friends who supposedly couldn't afford my services.
So I started seeing the people she sent to me, and I pre-qualified them by telling them "the heavens would not open up & celestial choirs would not sing with the first dose of the remedy," that it would take a bit of time to start seeing results, that they would need to leave coffee & mint alone, that my services usually cost ___.
If they understood what I said & convinced me that they were serious about getting well, I would see them.
I stopped this experiment after 6 months because only one person of that 6 took the remedy even one time.
The others, when I called to follow up, gave as excuses, "Oh, I decided I didn't want to give up coffee," or "I looked on the Internet and decided homeopathy couldn't work," or the worst, "Well, I didn’t spend any money on working with you so I'm not out anything if I drop out."
The person who had referred these people was horrified & very apologetic. I decided I had answered the question of fees/pro-bono, and moved on with my practice.

What I do now if someone is interested in working with me but is disabled or has recently lost their job, is offer to see the person for a year if they pay the full intake fee plus the cost of the remedy. In the nine years I've offered that option, guess how many times people have taken my offer?

Not one time.

If they can't get it for free, they aren't interested. How sad.

As to getting people to keep intake appointments, I insist on a deposit of 1/3rd of my fee in order to set up the initial intake appointment. I never get no-shows, nor do people object to the deposit. (I request the deposit without apology, I'm very matter-of-fact, which gives them no basis to object.)

Also, I've heard that people on Medicaid are notorious for not keeping appointments in conventional medical clinics. To the point that clinics overbook around Medicaid appointments, to keep their practitioners busy.

So it seems the issue really isn't the catagory of care (alternative vs. conventional) but that when no money is involved in receiving care, there's no commitment.

Marybeth
--
Marybeth Buchele, HMC, CCH, RSHom(NA)
Professional Homeopath & Flower Essence Practitioner
Certified CEASE Therapist

Offices in Ames, IA, 515.233.6068
& Menomonie, WI, 715.497.6068
www.natural-wellness.us

Thank you Marybeth, I like that 1/3 down a lot. Think I will add that to my practice.

No shows mess up my schedule. It is so frustrating.

Warmly, Maria

There is more to this than meets the eye.
May I please describe:

Medicaid peple do not have the choices of a "normal" person: By definition people on Medicaid are extremnely ill longterm, so ill that they are totally incapable of even short term part time job employment; they are unable to help themsleves at all they are so ill.
They are also VERY far below poverty level.

I know, I have had a lot to do with Medicaid people of which I was one for more than ten years.
I too skipped appointments without notice.

I would never do that if I could have helped it.
But those who were never on Medicaid have no clue what such life is like.
Try to imagine being extremely ill, and having to live on $329 a month. One can not afford toilet paper much less a phone. Supplements or vitamins or real food, are all out of the question. My own approach was to ask to crawl or roll in people's yards to "weed the dandelions" in the lawn, and use the $5 so earned to buy meat. The dandelions of course are excellent nutrition from root to flower. But I am more knowledgeble and resourceful than most people on Medicaid.
I was often far too ill all night and in pain, to get one wink of sleep (which stil happens with no notice) and add that to the disease condition and there is no way one is well enough to make one's way to a clinic or doctor that day.
How to notify them? No phone remember. It costs too much. There is a $10 a month special deal (was, it was cancelled this month) for a phone if you are on Medicaid, but you cannot eat a phone so it is still too expensive.
With no money it is not as if transport is easy. One must get to a bus stop, but may be too ill to do so....maybe change buses three times. The rides are an hour each. And one must have busfare. From where? Paratransit vans often fail to arrive or run several hours late. The rules say they shoud "try" to arrive within 2 hours of the requested time. And you MUST be at the curb waiting regardless of weather. (-30 F?) But there is no rule about how long you ride around the city on there while they try to always get people on in the 2 hours window. You may be there another 3 hours before they drop you off. Oops missed the appt.

Living on Medicaid is not living, and the challenge to stay alive when truly sick and unable to work is the most digusting condition in which this wealthy country of America leaves a huge number of people least able to fend for themselves.
Those with mental conditions like schitzophrenia or PTSD are worst off of all. Medicaid does not give proper credence to mental illness, and the victims have no way to think of survival methods. The same applies with the many ill people misdiagosed. A woman I knew of age 35, with leukaemia was minus any help becasue the first Medicaid doctor she saw, told her they did not believe the diagnosis. (LIke many others, she died - no longer a liability to the Medicaid system.)
Last month I made the mistake of seeing a medicaid doctor again myself, due to a lean month with illness leaving me broke. I could not afford a co-pay somewhere.
My crotchety wheelcair had led to painful upper arms and shoulders then had broken down and starting this year you need a doctor's prescription to get a wheelchair repaired on Medicare (which I now am on due to age) plus a copay. The woman "doctor" I saw, decided that I was full of it when I also asked for a physiotherapy referral for the painful arms (I actually had two torn rotator cuffs, and the muscle coming off the bone on my right upper arm) , and she told me to see a psychiatrist and get a walker. She followed that up with a lawyer's letter that if I failed to do so I may not ever come back to the clinic.
(I do not have time or energy to file a complaint against her. But now my medical recird has a psychiatric diagnosis, and sick I am too sick in the head to understand those I may not get the ful copy.)

I was in no way surprised. I was kicking myself for having not remembered all the abuse to which medicaid people are NORMALLY subjected. Even the heart specialist I saw a few years ago was totally abusive.
He pretended to feel various pules and reported on them in the record, with numbers! but never actually touched me or got closer than about 6 inches to any part of me. I overheard him say to another doctor in the passage "I wish they would not send these people to me". I guess he assumed I had lice or fleas. (I wish I had! He deserved some. I would have personally given them jumping lessons.)
Reporting him to his boss, formally, went nowhere of course. THey never even bothered to acknowledge my letter. I was "one of those people" who do not count. Of course the fictitious numbers are still in my medical record, weirdly different from others later. When I ordered a copy of the record, they send me someo eelse's record, with a different heart condition. Or maybe it was mine - I'm nuts remember. Must be 89 yrs old, a man.
By the way this is another reason for missed appointments. One is treated as some garbage the cat dragged in, with not two braincells to knock together - and it is SCARY to KNOW that you will NOT be heard and that you are at the mercy of whatever the so-called medicad doctor wants to subject you to.
Medicaid pays these doctors a pittance, and no self-respecting doctor will work for such ridiculously low pay. So with very rare exceptions, medicaid doctors are snake peddlars, and those on medicaid avoid them if they can possibly stay alive without them.

In my own recent case a friend came to my rescue, manhandled my broken chair and myself to get to the repair place, (where they always see a chair breakdown as an urgent emergency of "no legs") and financed the chair repair. But most medicaid folks only know other medicaid folks .... who can not help them to meet expectations such as attending dubiously useful medical appointments.
(I waited two months and then saw a DO for my arm pain who diagnosed the cause and has given several treatments - though I was too ill to attend one of them - for the "psychiatric" condition of torn rotator cuffs and musle tear. I had not used Osteopathy before, know nothing about it except it seems to be another energy medicine system, which works for me..way better than surgery.)
There was one year when I found a real doctor who accepted medicaid pittances, (wife of a heart specialist who likely brought home the main bacon) and she treated patieints as humans with brains. Her practice was of course overloaded with Medicaid folk who sweated blood to make it to their appointments. They knew they would be heard and get real help.

Please do see medicaid victims the way they really are. It is incredibly hard to stay alive as a Medicaid idividual. And keeping a medical appointment is not easy to do. Nobody has an alarmclock or calendar or TV or radio either. Those assumed options are luxury goods. See it in context. Try to imagine making a budget.
One is too ill to even think straight form lack of nutrtion for most of the time. There are free food places on most days for one meal. You have to get to them somehow. They serve potato, corn, gravy, and what we jokingly called "mysterymush"., being grateful for something. But it fills stomachs, it does not nourish. SAme wiht the canned food "hunger drives". They are well meant canned saltpots with flavoring. Sick-making and lacking in nutrients.

America's leaders should be ashamed.
It should be a requirement for any aspiring president to live as an ill person on Medicaid for a month. Preferably also in a wheeelchair. They might then grow a backbone and start seeing the country as ALL the humans in it.

Perhaps I come across too passionate.
I see the incredible cruelty perpetrated right here in our own ridicuously wealthy greed-mongered country - against those least abe to manage - every day - and it sucks.
Medicaid and Medicare were just cut again.
What is the difference between this torture and just shooting whoever the greedy politicins want to get rid of?
In THIS city, the coucil actually tried to make a LAW against being homeless.
WE don't like to look at the prolem so let's make the problem illegal?

It did not work so now there IS a law against sitting on the sidewalk! That passed just fine. How sick.
In winter here "warming centers" - may only be opened for people with nowhere to go - like medicaid people with mental illness, drug addition, leukaemia, and any not yet diagnosed illness (mine took more than 5 yrs to diagnose) etc - if the temperture is 15F or below, and then only after 8pm for as many as fit, the rest get to stay out - regardless of wind chil or actual temp. People owning places to go indoors out of the killer cold, WANT them open, but the rules do not allow. There is always some stupid excuse like that fire sprinklers are not to the new code. THat of course is far more relevant than humans freezing to death.
THis is reality in America.

WHAT century are we in?
WHY does the populaton turn a blind eye to all this and vote for Strumpets with zero sign of a molecule of compassion?
Is it that convenient to just pretend this situation does not exist?
Medcaid conditions could happen to anyone.

I take my hat off to the few Medicaid doctors whose eyes are open and who HELP the patients to get to them.
The one lady doctor I mentioned, used to send patients a day bus pass so they could get to her.
When my wheelchair broke down yrs ago (they break down more than old cars) and Medicaid put me on a waiting list to fix it, she went to a hospital and sought an old wheelchair she could have from the wreck room, and delivered it to me as a backup. She actually had three "wrecks" in her car, each with different issues, for me to choose what would suit me best. Medicaid and Medicare do not care that being without a wheelchair is like having both legs cut off and being dumped somewhere. (It also means you miss your medicaid appt - all it takes is a flat wheel).

I never met a medicaid person who brushed off a medical appointment that might have helped them.

Namaste,
Irene

Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.Furryboots.info
(Info on Feline health, genetics, nutrition & homeopathy)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Irene,
Thank you for educating us on the "other side" of subsidized health care in the US. How sad that people are treated so shabby.
Blessings,
Marybeth

--
Marybeth Buchele, HMC, CCH, RSHom(NA)
Professional Homeopath & Flower Essence Practitioner
Certified CEASE Therapist

Offices in Ames, IA, 515.233.6068
& Menomonie, WI, 715.497.6068
www.natural-wellness.us

Indeed yes.
Thanks for "listening":-)

(I hope what I wrote was obvious as being for general consumption.)

Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.Furryboots.info
(Info on Feline health, genetics, nutrition & homeopathy)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Lord have mercy!!!!!!!!!!!
Roger Bird
________________________________

To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
From: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:44:02 -0700
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Re: Free Homeopathic services--another " war story "
There is more to this than meets the eye.
May I please describe:

Medicaid peple do not have the choices of a "normal" person: By definition people on Medicaid are extremnely ill longterm, so ill that they are totally incapable of even short term part time job employment; they are unable to help themsleves at all they are so ill.
They are also VERY far below poverty level.

I know, I have had a lot to do with Medicaid people of which I was one for more than ten years.
I too skipped appointments without notice.

I would never do that if I could have helped it.
But those who were never on Medicaid have no clue what such life is like.
Try to imagine being extremely ill, and having to live on $329 a month. One can not afford toilet paper much less a phone. Supplements or vitamins or real food, are all out of the question. My own approach was to ask to crawl or roll in people's yards to "weed the dandelions" in the lawn, and use the $5 so earned to buy meat. The dandelions of course are excellent nutrition from root to flower. But I am more knowledgeble and resourceful than most people on Medicaid.
I was often far too ill all night and in pain, to get one wink of sleep (which stil happens with no notice) and add that to the disease condition and there is no way one is well enough to make one's way to a clinic or doctor that day.
How to notify them? No phone remember. It costs too much. There is a $10 a month special deal (was, it was cancelled this month) for a phone if you are on Medicaid, but you cannot eat a phone so it is still too expensive.
With no money it is not as if transport is easy. One must get to a bus stop, but may be too ill to do so....maybe change buses three times. The rides are an hour each. And one must have busfare. From where? Paratransit vans often fail to arrive or run several hours late. The rules say they shoud "try" to arrive within 2 hours of the requested time. And you MUST be at the curb waiting regardless of weather. (-30 F?) But there is no rule about how long you ride around the city on there while they try to always get people on in the 2 hours window. You may be there another 3 hours before they drop you off. Oops missed the appt.

Living on Medicaid is not living, and the challenge to stay alive when truly sick and unable to work is the most digusting condition in which this wealthy country of America leaves a huge number of people least able to fend for themselves.
Those with mental conditions like schitzophrenia or PTSD are worst off of all. Medicaid does not give proper credence to mental illness, and the victims have no way to think of survival methods. The same applies with the many ill people misdiagosed. A woman I knew of age 35, with leukaemia was minus any help becasue the first Medicaid doctor she saw, told her they did not believe the diagnosis. (LIke many others, she died - no longer a liability to the Medicaid system.)
Last month I made the mistake of seeing a medicaid doctor again myself, due to a lean month with illness leaving me broke. I could not afford a co-pay somewhere.
My crotchety wheelcair had led to painful upper arms and shoulders then had broken down and starting this year you need a doctor's prescription to get a wheelchair repaired on Medicare (which I now am on due to age) plus a copay. The woman "doctor" I saw, decided that I was full of it when I also asked for a physiotherapy referral for the painful arms (I actually had two torn rotator cuffs, and the muscle coming off the bone on my right upper arm) , and she told me to see a psychiatrist and get a walker. She followed that up with a lawyer's letter that if I failed to do so I may not ever come back to the clinic.
(I do not have time or energy to file a complaint against her. But now my medical recird has a psychiatric diagnosis, and sick I am too sick in the head to understand those I may not get the ful copy.)

I was in no way surprised. I was kicking myself for having not remembered all the abuse to which medicaid people are NORMALLY subjected. Even the heart specialist I saw a few years ago was totally abusive.
He pretended to feel various pules and reported on them in the record, with numbers! but never actually touched me or got closer than about 6 inches to any part of me. I overheard him say to another doctor in the passage "I wish they would not send these people to me". I guess he assumed I had lice or fleas. (I wish I had! He deserved some. I would have personally given them jumping lessons.)
Reporting him to his boss, formally, went nowhere of course. THey never even bothered to acknowledge my letter. I was "one of those people" who do not count. Of course the fictitious numbers are still in my medical record, weirdly different from others later. When I ordered a copy of the record, they send me someo eelse's record, with a different heart condition. Or maybe it was mine - I'm nuts remember. Must be 89 yrs old, a man.
By the way this is another reason for missed appointments. One is treated as some garbage the cat dragged in, with not two braincells to knock together - and it is SCARY to KNOW that you will NOT be heard and that you are at the mercy of whatever the so-called medicad doctor wants to subject you to.
Medicaid pays these doctors a pittance, and no self-respecting doctor will work for such ridiculously low pay. So with very rare exceptions, medicaid doctors are snake peddlars, and those on medicaid avoid them if they can possibly stay alive without them.

In my own recent case a friend came to my rescue, manhandled my broken chair and myself to get to the repair place, (where they always see a chair breakdown as an urgent emergency of "no legs") and financed the chair repair. But most medicaid folks only know other medicaid folks .... who can not help them to meet expectations such as attending dubiously useful medical appointments.
(I waited two months and then saw a DO for my arm pain who diagnosed the cause and has given several treatments - though I was too ill to attend one of them - for the "psychiatric" condition of torn rotator cuffs and musle tear. I had not used Osteopathy before, know nothing about it except it seems to be another energy medicine system, which works for me..way better than surgery.)
There was one year when I found a real doctor who accepted medicaid pittances, (wife of a heart specialist who likely brought home the main bacon) and she treated patieints as humans with brains. Her practice was of course overloaded with Medicaid folk who sweated blood to make it to their appointments. They knew they would be heard and get real help.

Please do see medicaid victims the way they really are. It is incredibly hard to stay alive as a Medicaid idividual. And keeping a medical appointment is not easy to do. Nobody has an alarmclock or calendar or TV or radio either. Those assumed options are luxury goods. See it in context. Try to imagine making a budget.
One is too ill to even think straight form lack of nutrtion for most of the time. There are free food places on most days for one meal. You have to get to them somehow. They serve potato, corn, gravy, and what we jokingly called "mysterymush"., being grateful for something. But it fills stomachs, it does not nourish. SAme wiht the canned food "hunger drives". They are well meant canned saltpots with flavoring. Sick-making and lacking in nutrients.

America's leaders should be ashamed.
It should be a requirement for any aspiring president to live as an ill person on Medicaid for a month. Preferably also in a wheeelchair. They might then grow a backbone and start seeing the country as ALL the humans in it.

Perhaps I come across too passionate.
I see the incredible cruelty perpetrated right here in our own ridicuously wealthy greed-mongered country - against those least abe to manage - every day - and it sucks.
Medicaid and Medicare were just cut again.
What is the difference between this torture and just shooting whoever the greedy politicins want to get rid of?
In THIS city, the coucil actually tried to make a LAW against being homeless.
WE don't like to look at the prolem so let's make the problem illegal?

It did not work so now there IS a law against sitting on the sidewalk! That passed just fine. How sick.
In winter here "warming centers" - may only be opened for people with nowhere to go - like medicaid people with mental illness, drug addition, leukaemia, and any not yet diagnosed illness (mine took more than 5 yrs to diagnose) etc - if the temperture is 15F or below, and then only after 8pm for as many as fit, the rest get to stay out - regardless of wind chil or actual temp. People owning places to go indoors out of the killer cold, WANT them open, but the rules do not allow. There is always some stupid excuse like that fire sprinklers are not to the new code. THat of course is far more relevant than humans freezing to death.
THis is reality in America.

WHAT century are we in?
WHY does the populaton turn a blind eye to all this and vote for Strumpets with zero sign of a molecule of compassion?
Is it that convenient to just pretend this situation does not exist?
Medcaid conditions could happen to anyone.

I take my hat off to the few Medicaid doctors whose eyes are open and who HELP the patients to get to them.
The one lady doctor I mentioned, used to send patients a day bus pass so they could get to her.
When my wheelchair broke down yrs ago (they break down more than old cars) and Medicaid put me on a waiting list to fix it, she went to a hospital and sought an old wheelchair she could have from the wreck room, and delivered it to me as a backup. She actually had three "wrecks" in her car, each with different issues, for me to choose what would suit me best. Medicaid and Medicare do not care that being without a wheelchair is like having both legs cut off and being dumped somewhere. (It also means you miss your medicaid appt - all it takes is a flat wheel).

I never met a medicaid person who brushed off a medical appointment that might have helped them.

Namaste,
Irene

Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.Furryboots.info
(Info on Feline health, genetics, nutrition & homeopathy)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."
________________________________

Posted by: Irene de Villiers

It is standard operating procedure (SOP) in real estate transactions to do exactly the same thing. It is called "earnest money".

Roger Bird
________________________________

To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
From: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 08:14:20 +0300
Subject: [Minutus] Re: Free Homeopathic services--another " war story "
In 2006, at the urging of a patient who had referred many paying clients, I decided to do one pro-bono case a month for a year as she had many friends who supposedly couldn't afford my services.
So I started seeing the people she sent to me, and I pre-qualified them by telling them "the heavens would not open up & celestial choirs would not sing with the first dose of the remedy," that it would take a bit of time to start seeing results, that they would need to leave coffee & mint alone, that my services usually cost ___.
If they understood what I said & convinced me that they were serious about getting well, I would see them.
I stopped this experiment after 6 months because only one person of that 6 took the remedy even one time.
The others, when I called to follow up, gave as excuses, "Oh, I decided I didn't want to give up coffee," or "I looked on the Internet and decided homeopathy couldn't work," or the worst, "Well, I didn’t spend any money on working with you so I'm not out anything if I drop out."
The person who had referred these people was horrified & very apologetic. I decided I had answered the question of fees/pro-bono, and moved on with my practice.

What I do now if someone is interested in working with me but is disabled or has recently lost their job, is offer to see the person for a year if they pay the full intake fee plus the cost of the remedy. In the nine years I've offered that option, guess how many times people have taken my offer?

Not one time.

If they can't get it for free, they aren't interested. How sad.

As to getting people to keep intake appointments, I insist on a deposit of 1/3rd of my fee in order to set up the initial intake appointment. I never get no-shows, nor do people object to the deposit. (I request the deposit without apology, I'm very matter-of-fact, which gives them no basis to object.)

Also, I've heard that people on Medicaid are notorious for not keeping appointments in conventional medical clinics. To the point that clinics overbook around Medicaid appointments, to keep their practitioners busy.

So it seems the issue really isn't the catagory of care (alternative vs. conventional) but that when no money is involved in receiving care, there's no commitment.

Marybeth
--
Marybeth Buchele, HMC, CCH, RSHom(NA)
Professional Homeopath & Flower Essence Practitioner
Certified CEASE Therapist

Offices in Ames, IA, 515.233.6068
& Menomonie, WI, 715.497.6068
www.natural-wellness.us

Irene, I was reading your comment from will-power, and then I saw that it was your comment, and I was in shock. I am glad I read the whole thing.

Roger Bird
________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 08:51:02 -0600
Subject: RE: [Minutus] Re: Free Homeopathic services--another " war story "
Lord have mercy!!!!!!!!!!!
Roger Bird
________________________________

To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
From: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:44:02 -0700
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Re: Free Homeopathic services--another " war story "
There is more to this than meets the eye.
May I please describe:

Medicaid peple do not have the choices of a "normal" person: By definition people on Medicaid are extremnely ill longterm, so ill that they are totally incapable of even short term part time job employment; they are unable to help themsleves at all they are so ill.
They are also VERY far below poverty level.

I know, I have had a lot to do with Medicaid people of which I was one for more than ten years.
I too skipped appointments without notice.

I would never do that if I could have helped it.
But those who were never on Medicaid have no clue what such life is like.
Try to imagine being extremely ill, and having to live on $329 a month. One can not afford toilet paper much less a phone. Supplements or vitamins or real food, are all out of the question. My own approach was to ask to crawl or roll in people's yards to "weed the dandelions" in the lawn, and use the $5 so earned to buy meat. The dandelions of course are excellent nutrition from root to flower. But I am more knowledgeble and resourceful than most people on Medicaid.
I was often far too ill all night and in pain, to get one wink of sleep (which stil happens with no notice) and add that to the disease condition and there is no way one is well enough to make one's way to a clinic or doctor that day.
How to notify them? No phone remember. It costs too much. There is a $10 a month special deal (was, it was cancelled this month) for a phone if you are on Medicaid, but you cannot eat a phone so it is still too expensive.
With no money it is not as if transport is easy. One must get to a bus stop, but may be too ill to do so....maybe change buses three times. The rides are an hour each. And one must have busfare. From where? Paratransit vans often fail to arrive or run several hours late. The rules say they shoud "try" to arrive within 2 hours of the requested time. And you MUST be at the curb waiting regardless of weather. (-30 F?) But there is no rule about how long you ride around the city on there while they try to always get people on in the 2 hours window. You may be there another 3 hours before they drop you off. Oops missed the appt.

Living on Medicaid is not living, and the challenge to stay alive when truly sick and unable to work is the most digusting condition in which this wealthy country of America leaves a huge number of people least able to fend for themselves.
Those with mental conditions like schitzophrenia or PTSD are worst off of all. Medicaid does not give proper credence to mental illness, and the victims have no way to think of survival methods. The same applies with the many ill people misdiagosed. A woman I knew of age 35, with leukaemia was minus any help becasue the first Medicaid doctor she saw, told her they did not believe the diagnosis. (LIke many others, she died - no longer a liability to the Medicaid system.)
Last month I made the mistake of seeing a medicaid doctor again myself, due to a lean month with illness leaving me broke. I could not afford a co-pay somewhere.
My crotchety wheelcair had led to painful upper arms and shoulders then had broken down and starting this year you need a doctor's prescription to get a wheelchair repaired on Medicare (which I now am on due to age) plus a copay. The woman "doctor" I saw, decided that I was full of it when I also asked for a physiotherapy referral for the painful arms (I actually had two torn rotator cuffs, and the muscle coming off the bone on my right upper arm) , and she told me to see a psychiatrist and get a walker. She followed that up with a lawyer's letter that if I failed to do so I may not ever come back to the clinic.
(I do not have time or energy to file a complaint against her. But now my medical recird has a psychiatric diagnosis, and sick I am too sick in the head to understand those I may not get the ful copy.)

I was in no way surprised. I was kicking myself for having not remembered all the abuse to which medicaid people are NORMALLY subjected. Even the heart specialist I saw a few years ago was totally abusive.
He pretended to feel various pules and reported on them in the record, with numbers! but never actually touched me or got closer than about 6 inches to any part of me. I overheard him say to another doctor in the passage "I wish they would not send these people to me". I guess he assumed I had lice or fleas. (I wish I had! He deserved some. I would have personally given them jumping lessons.)
Reporting him to his boss, formally, went nowhere of course. THey never even bothered to acknowledge my letter. I was "one of those people" who do not count. Of course the fictitious numbers are still in my medical record, weirdly different from others later. When I ordered a copy of the record, they send me someo eelse's record, with a different heart condition. Or maybe it was mine - I'm nuts remember. Must be 89 yrs old, a man.
By the way this is another reason for missed appointments. One is treated as some garbage the cat dragged in, with not two braincells to knock together - and it is SCARY to KNOW that you will NOT be heard and that you are at the mercy of whatever the so-called medicad doctor wants to subject you to.
Medicaid pays these doctors a pittance, and no self-respecting doctor will work for such ridiculously low pay. So with very rare exceptions, medicaid doctors are snake peddlars, and those on medicaid avoid them if they can possibly stay alive without them.

In my own recent case a friend came to my rescue, manhandled my broken chair and myself to get to the repair place, (where they always see a chair breakdown as an urgent emergency of "no legs") and financed the chair repair. But most medicaid folks only know other medicaid folks .... who can not help them to meet expectations such as attending dubiously useful medical appointments.
(I waited two months and then saw a DO for my arm pain who diagnosed the cause and has given several treatments - though I was too ill to attend one of them - for the "psychiatric" condition of torn rotator cuffs and musle tear. I had not used Osteopathy before, know nothing about it except it seems to be another energy medicine system, which works for me..way better than surgery.)
There was one year when I found a real doctor who accepted medicaid pittances, (wife of a heart specialist who likely brought home the main bacon) and she treated patieints as humans with brains. Her practice was of course overloaded with Medicaid folk who sweated blood to make it to their appointments. They knew they would be heard and get real help.

Please do see medicaid victims the way they really are. It is incredibly hard to stay alive as a Medicaid idividual. And keeping a medical appointment is not easy to do. Nobody has an alarmclock or calendar or TV or radio either. Those assumed options are luxury goods. See it in context. Try to imagine making a budget.
One is too ill to even think straight form lack of nutrtion for most of the time. There are free food places on most days for one meal. You have to get to them somehow. They serve potato, corn, gravy, and what we jokingly called "mysterymush"., being grateful for something. But it fills stomachs, it does not nourish. SAme wiht the canned food "hunger drives". They are well meant canned saltpots with flavoring. Sick-making and lacking in nutrients.

America's leaders should be ashamed.
It should be a requirement for any aspiring president to live as an ill person on Medicaid for a month. Preferably also in a wheeelchair. They might then grow a backbone and start seeing the country as ALL the humans in it.

Perhaps I come across too passionate.
I see the incredible cruelty perpetrated right here in our own ridicuously wealthy greed-mongered country - against those least abe to manage - every day - and it sucks.
Medicaid and Medicare were just cut again.
What is the difference between this torture and just shooting whoever the greedy politicins want to get rid of?
In THIS city, the coucil actually tried to make a LAW against being homeless.
WE don't like to look at the prolem so let's make the problem illegal?

It did not work so now there IS a law against sitting on the sidewalk! That passed just fine. How sick.
In winter here "warming centers" - may only be opened for people with nowhere to go - like medicaid people with mental illness, drug addition, leukaemia, and any not yet diagnosed illness (mine took more than 5 yrs to diagnose) etc - if the temperture is 15F or below, and then only after 8pm for as many as fit, the rest get to stay out - regardless of wind chil or actual temp. People owning places to go indoors out of the killer cold, WANT them open, but the rules do not allow. There is always some stupid excuse like that fire sprinklers are not to the new code. THat of course is far more relevant than humans freezing to death.
THis is reality in America.

WHAT century are we in?
WHY does the populaton turn a blind eye to all this and vote for Strumpets with zero sign of a molecule of compassion?
Is it that convenient to just pretend this situation does not exist?
Medcaid conditions could happen to anyone.

I take my hat off to the few Medicaid doctors whose eyes are open and who HELP the patients to get to them.
The one lady doctor I mentioned, used to send patients a day bus pass so they could get to her.
When my wheelchair broke down yrs ago (they break down more than old cars) and Medicaid put me on a waiting list to fix it, she went to a hospital and sought an old wheelchair she could have from the wreck room, and delivered it to me as a backup. She actually had three "wrecks" in her car, each with different issues, for me to choose what would suit me best. Medicaid and Medicare do not care that being without a wheelchair is like having both legs cut off and being dumped somewhere. (It also means you miss your medicaid appt - all it takes is a flat wheel).

I never met a medicaid person who brushed off a medical appointment that might have helped them.

Namaste,
Irene

Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.Furryboots.info
(Info on Feline health, genetics, nutrition & homeopathy)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."
________________________________

Posted by: Irene de Villiers

Sadly I think difficulties building up for some time and help was needed just to survive.
I did not do anything,, Jean

No doubt the stresses of simply trying to negotiate her life added to
the pain she suffered as well as the clot forming.

Her description of living poor barely touches the surface of the reality.
When people remove their blinders, what is visible is a society with a
kick-them-when-they're-down mentality. While not have Irene's dibility,
I have lived poor, dealt with the poor and institutions dealing with the poor
and disenfranchised. The reality of bigotry and classism, in all its forms, is
core to this country and the way it controls the public--divide and conquer
based on hate.

t