Chronic Health Conditions Discussion and Support

Is so rigged for profit that even if you have top of the line insurance, and think you'll be okay, it all depends on where you live as to how well you will do after a needed procedure.

For instance, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and your doctor practices at UCSF, a "teaching hospital," you will probably have a great experience. On many levels. And although this institution faithfully fulfills the "diversity" requirement resulting from anti-discrimination legislation, it doesn't do this on the backs of the patients.

People who work at the hospital speak English. For the most part, fluently.

Contrast that with Marin General Hospital, where the nursing aides will simply scream at the patients "No compren' Ingles" when the patients ask for water or even more critical needs to be met. And since there are very few nurses, this is a huge and even life threatening problem.

Additionally, hospitals that are geared for profit, like Kaiser and Sutter franchises, do not mind skimping on equipment, even to the point that "sterile" bandages are so old they are no longer sterile. Many nurses are "Traveling" nurses, meaning they do not work for the hospital, but work for a nursing agency. As a result, the first few days on a ward, they don't have any idea where most things are. Good luck to patients needing a crash cart, digitalis, or a shot to stop anaphylactic shock.

When Big Insurers approve an $ 89K by pass heart surgery, they should care that the post op care is excellent as well. But they don't. So if the bandages for that surgery are poor quality, if the nursing staff is inattentive and non-existent, all this means is that a person gets to undergo a tremendously upsetting ordeal, where they may "fly through" the super-expensive surgery, but then die of an infection due to inadequate post op care.