Healthcare up close

by Gary Manley on Saturday, December 29, 2010 at 6:30pm

I have had the unfortunate opportunity to get very up close and personal with our healthcare industry for the past four years and four months. I was initially hospitalized with a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis in Feb. of 2006. Based on personal history, it was generally thought that I had drank myself into this state and more then one physician gave off the aura that whatever I got I deserved. One physician on this initial team of Gastrointerologists that was called in thought it possible that my condition was caused by microstones in my gall bladder and it was removed on St. Patrick's Day 2006. I was hospitalized with the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis two additional times in 2006 and again the cause was considered to be my use (abuse) of alcohol. During my 30 days in the hospital, there were a number of procedures done to determine the cause of my problem. There were additional looks taken at the same facility and again at a teaching the following year when I was sure there had to be something better than spending the rest of my life tied to narcotics. Through these separate hospitalizations and out-patient procedures I believe there were no fewer than a dozen opportunities for the congenital condition (since birth) to have been observed by any of the physicians involved. I am obviously frustrated that the condition should have been spotted 52 months ago and possibly not burdened in the many ways myself and my family have been during that period. I am frustrated that myself and my insurance company has paid well into six figures since this began, much of it for these tests and scans and there is no "claw-back" as so many have demanded for Wall St. executives. And as frustrating as any of of these items is that we just passed an approximately 1100 page healthcare bill that will do nothing to resolve any of this.