Personal experience: in a private clinic with Medicaid

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It so happened that the first thing that I had to do on the newly issued Medicaid was a surgical operation and a biopsy. Prior to that, Medicaid had been idle for half a year: there was no reason to go to the doctors. The visit took place solely for preventive purposes. I did not complain about anything, I just wanted to make sure that everything was still in order.

And then suddenly the doctor says: “You know, I don’t like something here. You would pass the tests. Let's just now and hand over, in your case, you can take them at any time and no matter whether you eat or not. ”

The results of the analysis had to be familiarized in a week and a half. It was at that moment that my Medicaid, ironically, ceased to act.

Experience one: check if your Medicaid is active if you received it before SSN.

Now I will say a very strange, but true thing.

If Medicaid insurance is issued before it is received social security number, then it acts until the birthday of its owner. After receiving the SSN and already having Medicaid, you must send this SSN to the insurance company that is making Medicaid to you, and as quickly as possible.

If you are just another year before you received your SSN, then your Medicaid may “fly off”. And this time we will have to wait for the SSN to write to the company, and, shaking hands with the paper of the newly acquired social security number, extend Medicaid. All this was explained to me in the company through which my Medicaid was made. It's just such an option in the rules of registration, such a bureaucratic hole.

You can’t be safe here: you’ll have that backlash that takes place between your birthday and getting an SSN, just to suffer without a Medicaid.

It so happened that my birthday happened before I received the SSN. With a difference of two months. But my Medicaid “flew off” not exactly on my birthday, but a little later. Probably when the clerk or computer noticed that the birthday had passed, and the SSN was not added. And it happened exactly when I really needed to know what exactly does not like my doctor.

I was lucky that the SSN then I received just the other day, and I had something to show the company. After the introduction of the SSN, Medicaid resumes its action not immediately, it should take several days until it takes its place Update. It was during these few days that my only visit to the clinic was paid and cost me $ 100.

The clinic was private, found simply by searching the Internet and introductory question to the reception desk “Do you accept Medicaid cards?”.

Experience Two: Ask Additional Questions

The second (paid) visit to the same clinic was to another doctor, not a Russian-speaking smiling lady, as last time, but to a doctor from India, a small and very meticulous woman who was examined by a patient. And this woman spoke with such a strong accent that even with perfect knowledge of English you would still need the help of a translator. And I knew him imperfectly.

But the phrase "We definitely need to see what's inside. We need just make sure...,” I somehow immediately understood this. Especially this one"inside". A woman from India sent me to have an operation to remove a tumor with the suspicion that the tumor was cancer.

In case of suspicion of oncology and the appointment of a surgical operation, in order to clarify the circumstances, Medicaid should, in theory, cover everything.

But it would never be amiss to ask the question: does Medicaid cover anesthesia? Does it cover the suture? Does he cover the rehabilitation period in the clinic, no matter how many hours (days) it takes?

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Experience three: accompanying

In the directions for all complex procedures (colonoscopy, gastroscopy, all surgical procedures where general anesthesia is required and the patient can feel imperfect for a long time after the procedure), they write: an accompanying person is required. Without accompanying you have the right to refuse the operation.

Accompanying is any person who (according to the rules) should have an ID and, preferably, a car (but in reality, he doesn’t care about having a car). The name and surname of the accompanying person is written in medical records. This is the person who is formally responsible for what happens to you while he accompanies you to your home after the operation.

Tip: Take a patient attendant who has a video game, book or knitting with you in the video game tablet. He will have to sit there for a long time. He should go to the clinic with you, and he should go out with you. True, in the process it can be released in a restaurant, for example. This is not a prison.

In this place I nostalgically remember how one of Kashira traumatology was returning on foot, where I had three fractures after an accident.

Experience Four: you will be informed ten times and asked fifteen. But you will still be very anxious

General anesthesia is subject to the rules for making such. From the patient’s side, this is a duty, starting from the start of that day (i.e., from midnight), in which the operation will take place, do not eat or drink anything, do not take medicines. You can smoke, but in such an entourage it comes to the head of very few people, so I do not smoke.

The staff of the clinic calls you three times: in the evening, two days before, in the evening, one day before, and in the morning, on the day of the operation, they call back early in the morning at 8 and ask: you didn't drink water? Did not eat food? Did not take medication?

In addition, on the day of the appointment of the operation, you also sign a special paper: I undertake not to drink water and not to eat food, starting from 00 hours on such a date.

This does not completely abolish a rather specific psychological state, which, perhaps, needless to say. In your own country and in the country where you are an immigrant, you have completely different attitudes towards such things as surgery for suspected oncology. This is the case when “houses and walls help”. We do not know how the staff will treat us. We do not know (yet) what we will do in case of a medical error. All this we will have to learn later, God forbid.

Experience Five: Operative surgery in some private clinics in New York is completely anonymous.

Not in all clinics, not in all offices. In the clinic where I had to be operated on, abortions were also performed - and I assume that the anonymity of all who sat in line was caused by this.

How this anonymity is respected. First you draw a lottery. You are given 50 papers with the names of US states, you choose one blindly. I got Louisiana. Then you get in line and wait.

Nobody calls you by name. As soon as you hear the word "Louisiana" - get up and go to the interview, from which you will return back to the waiting room.

At the interview, the nurse questions you about all food and drug allergies, past diseases - and writes everything down in a questionnaire. She asks you again if, by any chance, you have eaten food or drunk water. The interview lasts about ten minutes, then you are released. After that, you wait in line for the surgical unit itself.

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Experience six: anesthesia can enter the back of the hand

You have a locker in which you put your clothes, and the key to the locker is attached to a rubber bracelet, and the bracelet must be put on your hand. The room with the lockers is bordered by an emergency surgery in which you are given a referral for blood and urine. And you have to pass all this right now, in the office right there. Mobile phones, expensive items, jewelry, wallet in the surgical unit can not be made. All this should guard your companion. You take off everything (absolutely), put it in a locker, put on one-time pajamas and a cap and go to a bright future.

Your chamber will be isolated, but it will be isolated with the help of colored oilcloth, that is, you will feel the atmosphere of that on both sides are other patients, but you will not see them.

Wait for the operation, you will be on the couch-gurney, on it you will be taken there. In the process of waiting, a nurse will come to you, connect you to your space screen to see your heartbeat. He will ask again about allergies, medications taken, tolerance of anesthesia, whether they ate, drank, take pressure, and for a long, long time and in detail will ask you what your mood is before surgery.

Then you lie down a little more (I lay there for half an hour) and they will take you away.

When you are brought into the operating room, you will get used to the lamps for a long time, they will deprive you of your eyesight. That is why you will not immediately realize that anesthesia is pricked in your vein in the back of your hand. Perhaps for some it is not new, but my dorsal vein has not been previously used, and I didn’t even suspect that it could be so.

You will again be asked about allergies. They will tell you again in detail what you will do and why. And make an injection. By the way, painful.

General anesthesia in America is the best thing in this country. In three minutes you will wake up. That is, you will wake up in an hour and a half, of course, and already again in the waiting room, from where you came, but the whole reality between the injection and the awakening will be absent.

Experience Seven: You will have an accompanying person, but they will not let him in.

But, on the other hand, until you come to your senses after anesthesia, and doctors will not be sure of this, no one will let you out.

The first time you should quietly sneeze, and a nurse with a cookie will come running to you. They gave me water to the cookies, and they say they give someone juice. Then you lie down a bit more.

Then you will be asked to get up and walk to the chair. Sit down. Then get up again and walk along the corridor again. If you act like a half-dead, they will put you back. If you walk uncertainly, you will be led along the corridor by the arm until you enter confidently.

As soon as you begin to walk confidently, you will be directed to the lockers to change clothes. It will surely seem to you that the lockers are in the other side of the hall and that someone has moved your clothes along with the drawer to another place. The good news is: it only shows you. This is such a common hallucination for all. Public

After that, under the handle with the accompanying you will go home. You will be provided with all the prescriptions for all antibiotics and painkillers and will tell you in detail how to drink them. Once again: ask if it covers Medicaid. You, in any case, buy your painkillers, there will simply be fewer surprises. Nerves are not iron.

Eighth experience: no one will tell the results of the biopsy over the phone, everyone will say only at the reception

After two weeks, you will need to appoint an appointment to your doctor, to the same clinic where you were diagnosed. No, you cannot learn anything until you see him personally. If you did not have Medicaid, you would have to pay a steward as well for this visit.

At the reception you will be told everything and will give further recommendations.

Experience nine: six months later I received a bill for a strange amount of 20 dollars

The bill itself also looked strange: it was not written, for which it is necessary to pay such a small amount. If I did something that the insurance does not cover, then according to all the laws of logic, the amount should have been much more: from one and a half thousand to infinity. Nobody expected twenty dollars, either in a good or in a bad sense of the word. It was not even written there, for which the twenty pay for: for suture material? For a cap? For a cookie?

These twenty dollars could be the result of bureaucratic confusion, and if you pay them instantly, then all right, God bless them. But then you probably will not return them. If you wait a while and the score is not the result of confusion, it will be repeated. And after having repeated it, it will have to either pay for it, or start to be interested in meticulously - is that all, in general?

So far - not repeated.

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Personal experience. How we treated a child in the USA

Personal experience: cons of the Medicaid program

Who can get Medicare and Medicaid

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