My wife has a lung disease and had to go on disability a few years back. Along with disability comes Medicare. Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful for the Medicare. However, Government controlled health care does have it’s red tape problems.
My wife gets pneumonia approx 3-4 times a year and has a compromised immune system. Due to her immune system we have found that Home Health Care works better than being admitted to the hospital to treat her pneumonia. Our thoughts are that it will save our family and our government money by getting the care at home and she won’t pick up something else in the hospital. The problem lies in the wait she has to go thru every time our doctor determines she needs to be on intravenous antibiotics. The last time she needed home care it took approx 1 week to get her medicine approved for delivery to our home. By the time she finally got the medicine and the IV started, she had taken a turn for the worse and was required to stay on the antibiotics for 3 weeks. If they had started the meds when ordered by our doctor, she would have been on the IV only 3 or 4 days. I actually had to get my congressman’s office involved to get any action at all.
So….. Lets take this situation we are now in to see how well our Government can handle Health Care. Our Doctor called Home Health with the order for Home IV Antibiotics at 9:30 am Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday January 26, 2010. The meds were to arrive no later than Tuesday evening. It is now 11:43 am est on Wed. January 27, 2010 and still no approval for the meds. I have called the Home Care Service and they say the approval comes out of California and we have to wait. Well, My wife is getting worse by the hour. Her temperature is now at 103.2 degrees. My temperature is also climbing but not for the same reason!!!!!!!!!!!
I will continue to post with updates on the approval process. Keep reading because this may be you or your loved one the next time.