I came across a wonderful blog when I did a Google search for “annual cost of cancer treatment”. My curiosity was spiked when I was writing my dad an e-mail lamenting my 1 million dollar lifetime maximum and 6000 dollar annual copay (2000 dollars per family member per year). I thought man, what would happen if we all got into a car accident and needed to be rushed to an emergency room, makes you step back and think about what you want to be thinking about when you are facing a life and death situation, I truly believe it is a cruel culture when you must balance your mortgage payment and your will to live. Anyway, for those of you wondering, after browsing around the blog of Jeanne Sather, a writer, and inspiration who is living with metastatic ovarian cancer, I found that just for her chemotherapy alone (this does not include any of the test, hospitalizations, doctors visits etc. etc. her monthly cost was roughly 30,000 yes thirty thousand dollars, and her annual costs only for chemotherapy were greater than 300,000 per year. The price of these non generic drugs were insane, I literally choked, she did a great job breaking this down on her blog. Jeanne did reach her lifetime max, in no time, luckily, or maybe not so much so after reaching her max she appears to have qualified for medicare. She talks about how she has to negotiate a month supply of her oral chemotherapy with the pharmacist which is 600 dollars for a 30 day supply. Medicare needed prior authorization, which was not approved.
Million dollar baby
I remember how upset I was when the Toyota dealership would not take my clunker, but this is just insane. We have to ask ourselves how we would feel if we were battling a fatal disease and we had to expend our precious energy battling with insurance companies that spend 20 percent of there earnings on payouts to shareholders and pay their executives huge salaries. Not, to mention when you are faced with something like cancer no one should have to go through this, you feel sick, vulnerable, weak, nautious, angry, abandoned, confused, desperate, and now you have to battle with the telephone operators of your insurance company. I have done this on some of my best days, and walked away from the conversation feeling helpless. I just can’t imagine this, all while approaching the one million dollar limit.
They always say that you can not place a price tag on human life. But I think my insurance company just did. I am the one million dollar baby. And I guess in retrospect that is a pretty decent amount, for that you can almost buy a house on west cliff drive. I can imagine sitting there in the treatment chair watching each drop of that medicine splash into the plastic holding chamber of the IV line…. drip, tick, drip, tick: the clock in unison, with each precious drop of life sustaining therapy. Counting up in dollars, and down in time, what a cruel joke, God bless America!!!
more info please take a look at this wonderful BLOG
It appears you are getting some perspective on life and living. Some times it's good to step back from our lives and look at other lives. Nice job.
Anyway, Obama's speech was the best ever and hopefully we can breath a sigh and pray that things will turn in the right direction.