Archive for November 17th, 2009

Visitors seeking U.S. health care fret over work
By Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press
GIBSONIA, Pa. — A bright girl with dark curls crowning her face, Matisse Reid has been sick all her life with a rare disorder that prevents her body from absorbing nutrients.
She nibbles on beet salad for lunch, but Matisse’s real meal — fats, nutrients and fluids — come from an intravenous line running from her backpack to a vein in her stomach. After six years of IV feedings, the pressure on her liver is becoming life-threatening and she is running out of usable veins. Often, she is doubled over with chronic pain and vomiting.
After months of fundraising in their native New Zealand, Wayne and Jodee Reid, Matisse’s parents, packed up their family of six and traveled 8,500 miles to Pittsburgh for a multi-organ transplant that could save their 6-year-old daughter’s life.
As they wait for a stomach, bowel and pancreas to become available, the Reids must draw from $260,000 they raised, money they are counting on to carry them through the years it will take Matisse to recover from her operation.
Like other foreign families in the United States to obtain lifesaving medical care, the Reids are here on tourist visas, which do not allow them to find jobs. Families say that makes it more difficult to sustain themselves on the long journey of saving their children’s lives, adding to their anxiety.
“At the end of the day, we’re just parents trying to do what’s best for their children,” Jodee said as Matisse, who is often in pain, played upstairs in the home they rent in this Pittsburgh suburb.
The Reids arrived in Pittsburgh in January, expecting to spend about three years here for Matisse’s operation and long recovery.
But with the wait for the transplants expecting to take eight months to a year, they now realize they may have to stay closer to five years — and it’s unclear whether the money they raised will be enough. If they spend only $60,000 annually — a tight stretch for a family of six — the money will run out in about four years.
Often, coming to the United States is the only choice for families seeking complicated transplants, leaving people who have always worked dependent on charitable people and organizations. On rare occasions, they are forced to return home.
“There’s no provision whatsoever, even for humanitarian grounds, to allow these people to work,” said Bruce Larson, director of the international personnel office at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., which treated about 8,000 foreigners last year at its hospitals, including several hundred children.
The federal government does not track how many of the millions of people who come here on tourist visas are seeking medical care.
Working with the Mayo Clinic and St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said he plans to sponsor a bill that would grant work permits to parents of children who need more than six months of medical care.
But it could get hung up in the bitter debate over immigration reform. Cohen wants to attach his bill to the broader reform legislation, which collapsed in the Senate in June.
“I should hope it would have support. It’s logical, it’s humane,” Cohen said. “I can’t imagine anyone thinking this would be a security risk. It’s just a humanitarian issue.”
Matisse was born on Christmas Day 2000 with chronic idiopathic intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a disorder in which the small or large intestines lose their ability to contract and push food, stool and air through the gastrointestinal tract. It affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States and is most common in children and the elderly. The cause is unknown but symptoms include severe bowel problems — from vomiting and diarrhea to chronic pain.
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where Matisse is awaiting the triple transplant, treats fewer than 30 international patients a year.
Years of lobbying convinced the New Zealand government to cover the $1.4 million cost of Matisse’s planned transplants. Independently, the Reids also raised nearly $260,000 in donations to sustain Matisse and her three siblings — Rachel, 15, Kalani, 9 and Fraanz, 2 — during the years it will take Matisse to recover.
“It’s only the highly motivated or those with some resources to raise money to come to another country, whether it’s England, France or the United States, can come,” said Dr. George Mazariegos, director of pediatric transplants at Children’s Hospital. “Right now the care is very disproportional to the need.”
Intestinal transplants have been done only about 1,300 times since 1989, nearly all in the United States, Mazariegos said.
A study by a group of doctors in Columbus, Ohio, found that of eight children who underwent such transplants, two died a short while later. Of those who survived, the study found their lifestyles were significantly improved and at least three had normal bowel movements within 18 months.
For the hundreds of foreigners who come to America every year seeking medical care, the issue of finances is ever present. Sometimes, medical care can take years, putting families in a financial bind.
According to immigration attorneys, there are two alternatives for foreigners to receive work permits, and both are rarely effective.
A family can open a small business. However, to ensure the business is viable they must invest at least $100,000. In this case, the owners of the business would have their visa status changed and they would get working papers.
Getting hired by a research institute, such as a university, can also provide a work visa. However, there are just a few thousand such visas issued annually and they normally expire within days of the lottery. Non-profit research institutes, such as hospitals, do have an unlimited number of work visas that they can issue annually and a foreigner hired by such an institution could get working papers as well.
Wayne Reid is a carpenter by trade and desperately wants to work — to keep busy and earn money for the family. He said he was offered under-the-table odd jobs but he refuses to do anything that might jeopardize his daughter’s treatment.

The emergency room physician decided to intubate (place a tube into the trachea) the patient even though he was alert and talking. Why?
Once stabilized the patient was moved to a private room and the doctors ordered reverse isolation. What is reverse isolation and why is it required for this patient?
The doctor ordered antibiotic treatment for the patient even though there was no sign of an infection. Why?

I have Aetna. She’s just about 5 months pregnant, she was going to get dropped from her insurance and she is currently on medi-cal for the prenatal care. Is it too late to add her to my plan for her to be covered during the rest of the pregnancy?
I tried calling Aetna right now but the it was past closing time lol

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nor do you even really understand it? But don’t feel bad.
Just face reality.
You listen to Fox, CNN, pundits, so-called experts~~~~and you base your opinions on what they feed you. Government writes pages and pages of bs which could well fit into fifty pages. Then they ‘delete’ existing this, and ‘amend’ existing that, and they interject some other sesquipedalian garbage. Its all so ridiculous.
One man or woman didn’t write a thousand pages. Many many individuals were involved in writing this bs.
Pres Obama, Biden, Clinton and all of the members of the House and Senate didn’t read the darn thing either. Most of you didn’t either.
You just argue over bs.
The President, Vice President, his staff ~~~Most of your legislators receive free health care (medical, dental, vision). You pay for such benefits.
Do you really think they care a ratz behind about the average American?
Don’t you realize that the reason the package is so voluminous is to confuse you, to steer you into believing what they don’t even understand themselves, as long as They are covered? Shouldn’t your concern rest with demanding that the legislators re-write HR3200 taking out all of the bs, and make it readable and understandable to American taxpayers?
Pres Obama or any other legislator can’t explain HR320. Not at a Town Hall Meeting. Not during an ‘exclusive’ interview.
In fact, no one in Washington can.
One thing left to do then?
Demand that it be cut down so that it is understandable to american taxpayers.
I doubt they would even know where to begin…..

Doctor Looked At My Private Parts?

I’m a 15 year old girl and I still go to the pediatrician.
Well yesterday I went for a physical exam and the doctor did a weird thing.
Usually, she would ask me to pull down my pants and just have a quick look down there with out me getting on the bed but this time, she gave me a gown [which she never does, i've been going to her for 6 years] and she made me lay on my back, pull my feet up to my chest and she put a finger in my private part. I felt really embarassed in that position and I had no idea she would be doing this. Is this normal? She’s a really nice doctor and I trust her but this is the first time she did this!

My wife’s insurance is 100% paid for and mine 80%.

I believe so. This ABC video explains why………..
Please watch the video before you have any rebuttal.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9GMKK_fW…

Itchy Burning Sensations On My Private?

OMG!! This is really embarrasing but I’m concern I’m pregnant and well like three days ago I started having this itchy now burning sensation on my private but not inside my Vagina more like the outside and stuff. I have a doctor’s appointment for next week but doesn’t anyone have an idea of what this could be?

My hubby took off for 4 weeks because we just had a baby, and we get a bill from his job for insurance, they SHOULD have taken out while he was off. When I was off at my previous job for 4 weeks, insurance,etc, still got taken out of my checks.

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