Mastectomy Bill in Congress

[Witchy_Dem]

Mastectomy Bill in Congress

It takes 2 seconds to do this and is very important...please take the time and do it really quick!

Breast Cancer Hospitalization Bill - Important legislation for all women.

Please send this to everyone in your address book. If there was ever a time when our voices and choices should be heard, this is one of those times. If you are receiving this it's because I think you will take the 30 seconds to go and vote on this issue and send it on to others you know who will do the same.

There's a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about eliminating the "drive-through mastectomy" where women are forced to go home hours after surgery against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached.

Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.

PLEASE!! Sign the petition by clicking on the web site below. You need not give more than your name and zip code number.

http://www.lifetimetv.com/health/breast_mastectomy_pledge.html

This takes about 2 seconds. PLEASE PASS THIS ON to your friends and family. THANKS

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Done

Let us all work on the day when no one has to have this surgery.

[babylonsister]

2. Done happily, with a huge recommend! And I will be forwarding. nt

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Done. Thanks.

[datadiva]

4. Done and forwarded.

Thanks!

[eleny]

5. K&R and sending to friends

[PuraVidaDreamin]

6. Good bill

done

[medeak]

7. Done! Had nightmare with Mom in hotel room

who should have never been discharged.

edited to say....discharge planners have the most evil job on earth

[PetraPooh]

18. Well a hotel room, no duh. I would choose the hospital over a

hotel room, but not over going home whenever reasonable possible and no known complications.

[medeak]

23. a lot of folks travel hundreds of miles

to have surgery (as everyone in my town has to)

and to be discharged in 24 hours after surgery...having to travel the same day no matter how far is torture.

[PetraPooh]

25. I get that, and I stand down for those that have to travel long distances.

[Hekate]

36. My Mom had a mastectomy at 80.She lives alone.Would rather die than ask...

...for help. Almost did die -- chemo gave her a heart attack (violent vomiting, spasming, loss of consciousness).

So she's a stubborn old bat, but dammit, there's no way in hell anyone who's still got surgical drains coming out of their body should be sent home with "instructions for self-care"!

The bottom-line problem with the health care industry in this country is embedded in the first part of this sentence: it's an industry, and there's a bottom-line mentality.

Hekate

[PetraPooh]

8. I'm sorry but first I have to know if there is a valid reason

for most masectomy patients to stay in the hospital for 48 hours, minimum. I have had many surgeries of variety of types and two babies, and I have usually left the hospital in less that 24 hours and healed faster than any of the patients who were surgeried at the same time I was. This won't stop the drive through surgery, they are still going to line all of us with similar surgeries up and run us through assembly style just the same way they do now. The follow up to surgery may be different, but being one that is usually having to leave the hospital without doctor consent because the hospital wants the extra $$'s,. . . sorry, I can't support this, I have too much proof that early release and recovering at home is often a better, healthier choice.

[fooj]

10. Have you ever had a masectomy?

Wow.........

[PetraPooh]

14. Essentially, yes. I had open heart surgery in 1964 that was

poorly concieved and caused my breasts to grow in a very deformed way. The surgeon tried to "guess" where my adult breasts would be though I was only 4 at the time; he incised a W shape ACROSS my chest rather than the straight line down the center. Therefore, I have had to have three reconstructive surgeries as an adult, removing all the old damaged breast tissue and replacing with implants. As far as I am aware I may be the only non-masectomy patient in the US to ever to have reconstructive breast surgery approved by the boards of insurance that make those decisions; it was a unanimous decision.

Edited to add: The reason it took three surgeries is because the scar tissue had become so tight and stretched that it literally stuck out perpendicular to my chest like a sheet of paper and ripped and bled constantly. Trying to re-do the scar itself to lay flat took a few tries. Also to this day, my breasts are entirely numb. Someone could bite, pinch, or whatever and I would not feel it at all.

[medeak]

21. not the same

as removing muscle tissue and lymph nodes under arm.

[PetraPooh]

24. Wow, tell that one to my surgeon, he would disagree I have no doubt.

He was often very frustrated by the extensive damage. Granted he didn't have to go into the armpit, but he did have to dislodge my skin all the way to my crotch to come up with enough skin to do the repairs to the scar damaged areas and was concerned he might even have to do some grafting from my inner thighs. Luckily for me, he didn't.

[adriennui]

11. one should have the choice.

insurance companies are going overboard with their cost cutting obsession.

[babylonsister]

12. Yes, there is a valid reason, though why I'm responding to this

asinine post I'll never know. There's tons of fluid left in your chest after the surgery that has to slowly drain out and be measured, something that isn't easy to do on your own. Once most of the fluid drips out, only then do the long, deep tubes inserted into your chest cavity by the surgeon get removed. And no, that is not something a patient should do at home.
Also, the trauma experienced by a mastectomy affects people different, but it's definitely traumatic, so it's nice to have trained medical personnel around when the bandages come off, though that takes longer than two days.
Now will you sign? :eyes:

[PetraPooh]

15. True, but mine was all handled just fine with daily outpatient visits to

to doctor. I didn't need to be in the hospital.

[PetraPooh]

16. Also let me say the ONLY time I ended up with a resistant infection

was the ONE time, as an adult, that I actually stayed in the hospital for the minimum three days that that particular surgery allowed. That was the first and only time I stayed in the hospital past 24 hours as an adult once it was my choice. Well, sort of, like I said, I rarely had doctors approval to leave in 24 hours but I did it anyway, and the doctors would end up just amazed at how quickly I recovered compared to his other patients.

[medeak]

20. beg to differ

but until you've had a total mastectomy think you don't know what you're talking about!

Know two discharge planners who HATE their jobs as have to do the evil bidding of insurance companies despite their nursing training.

[PetraPooh]

22. No begging needed, this is a place to differ. I just wish my

experiences weren't so demeaned by some who like to claim my posts are "ridiculous" and such just because I don't hop on board a cause. Nurses are trained to be sympathetic to their clients/patients. I wonder how the doctors, who are really the ones who come close to knowing best, view this concept.

[medeak]

26. LOL!!!!

doctors ones knowing best.... roflol!

30 years in medical field... docs believe me don't know more than nurses of pt's needs.

[PetraPooh]

28. Wow! I can't take you seriously anymore. You go to Dr's but

then take a nurse's advice over the doctor. You show so much disrespect for the doctor's but use them anyway. Hmmmm, this contradiction makes your opinion very difficult to take seriously. The nurses are only following doctors orders in the first place.

[medeak]

30. ok..this is last post

worked closely with doctors all my career. Worked in hospitals...started three medical companies. Doctors are not observing patients all the time and rely on medical professionals as their eyes and ears.

"taking orders" as you put it is most demeaning imo to what these people do.. calling docs night and day with a pts problems and giving recommendations to doc...and having him or her agree...and then writing the verbal order (agreement with nurse or professional)is not what I call "taking orders"

talk to an ICU nurse sometime... they damn know more than any doc I know!

[knitter4democracy]

31. Just agreeing.

My hubby's an internist, and he relies on the nurses when he's not in the hospital to call him and tell him what's going on with a patient. He rarely tells them which meds to use or what to try next without a lot of give and take, several questions on both sides, and finally an agreement on what to try. He's only had arguments a couple of times with nurses who thought they knew better about dosing or medication but were wrong, mainly because they didn't know the latest research and recommendations, which it's his job to know.

Yes, there are mediocre nurses, just as there are mediocre docs, but honestly, the system would run so much better with the nurses in charge.

[medeak]

32. Is he internal medical doc?

the most undervalued and underpaid docs in the world imo. The brightest and the best who diagnose and then the specialists get all the $.

Please give my thanks to your husband for what he does.

[knitter4democracy]

37. Yes, he is.

You made his day with that. :D

He loves the variety of internal medicine, and he loves a good medical mystery. He's had several doozies this year, one that really bothered him this last month. It's a hard job, but he'd hate anything else.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

38. Let me speak as a nurse to your assertions about nurses.

In the hospital, it is the nurse who is there at the bedside observing and assessing the patient. The nurse is the person who will manage your treatment immediately, if your condition detoriates quickly, and it is the nurse who contacts the doctor with their assessment and recommendations.

Apparently, you had a doctor who stayed permanently at your side during your hospitalizations. Lucky you. MKJ

[PetraPooh]

41. My experiences are just not supportive of your perspectives.

No, my doc didn't stay at my bedside. However he treated me like an equal, did a great job, and I was very pleased. Now this includes the surgeon that did the above mentioned surgery as well as my OBGYN that did my complete hysterectomy, and the two OBGYN's that delivered my babies. HOWEVER, the nursing staff was NOT at my bedside, did NOT treat me with respect, and rarely even looked at my chart before coming in a attempting to do what they THOUGHT needed to be done in accordance with what MOST patients given the same surgery needed. For example, I had my hysterectomy (complete, cut open ab and everything) with an epideral rather than general anesthetic. Nonetheless, every shift for the day I was in, came in and tried to make me cough and all this crap relating to general anesthesia. Also, it was in my chart that the catheter needed to be removed ASA I could walk after the surgery, but when I said it was time to remove it (I have some bladder issues and my urologist said that the whole cath routine would be putting me at great risk for issues) the nurses wouldn't and didn't till I threatened to remove it myself. I could go on for at least three pages as to how nurses disrespect and don't read what is in front of them. But I assure you if I ever had a nursing staff inside a hospital treat me as an adult who is paying for their services rather than a child that they need to control, well my opinion my change. Since that will never happen, I won't be changing my mind.

[medeak]

42. this is useless flamebait n/t

[PetraPooh]

43. Disagreeing is flaimebait? I expressed my opinion based on

experience. No flaming or name calling. Just an expression of my experience relating to nurses vs. doctors. I'm sorry your opinions are so easily annoyed.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

44. I'm an Army veteran nurse, who worked at the VA, hospice and with

Alzheimer's patients.

I definitely don't need to justify my skills and care to you...in fact, you seem like someone who takes and takes without knowing how it feels to have a true vocation, which involves caring for and giving of yourself to patients in order to lessen or relieve their suffering.

Your post indicates a feeling of superiority and contempt toward nurses, which most RW folks, like Ahnold, display.

MKJ

[medeak]

45. ignore option worked well for me

and thank you for your service! ;-)

[kcass1954]

27. This is all about taking the decision out of the hands of the insurance

companies, and putting it back in the hands of you and your doctor, where all medical decisions belong.

[PetraPooh]

29. I agree with this being the best goal. But mandatory

minimums isn't the way to do it. Removing maximums altogether is the way to do it. IE there should be no limit except that which is set by the doctor and his /her patient.

[fooj]

9. done

peace.

[trogdor]

13. Let me guess.

The author and most of the cosponsors are Republicans. A little background here - Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) used to do this sort of thing every six years as he came up for re-election (until Charles Schumer kicked his ass). Al would get on his soapbox about how he's sooooooooooo passionate about his "pet issue" (and I thought it was potholes), and all the women's groups would line up to endorse him, even though they ought to know better.

[PetraPooh]

17. Good point!

[bear425]

19. Done and kick. n/t

[readmoreoften]

33. KR

[caligirl]

34. Seems the Republicans are burning the candle at both ends

"Hidden in a pension bill now before Congress is a little-known Easter Egg just for the insurance industry. The provision (Section 307 of H.R. 2830) would give insurance companies the right to force an injured person to pay their health insurance plan back for their medical bills, leaving victims with nothing, even when the cost of future medical care and expenses are more than what they receive in compensation. Severely injured and disabled victims could be left without enough money for their future medical care, expenses that would inevitably be left to taxpayers.

This change would turn the Patients' Bill of Rights on its head, giving more power to profitable insurers at the expense of health care consumers.

Write your members of Congress and tell them to support the Patients' Bill of Rights and taxpayers by opposing provisions like the Section 307 giveaway.

As if that weren't enough, they’re trying to shoehorn more tax cuts for the rich into the same pension bill. The New York Times yesterday called the bill "a grab bag for bad tax ideas" – including wasteful tax shelters for millionaires and cuts in retirement protections for hundreds of thousands of workers.

Write your members of Congress now to protect your rights.

In Solidarity,
Jeff Blum, USAction Executive Director

PS: Click here for more information on the injustice in the pension bill"


Another attempt to screw the American public.

[Hekate]

35. Done. Dammit, I thought this thing was settled ages ago.

Why are we STILL having to petition the government to receive health care that (a) any civilized society would take for granted, and (b) that we all pay for our members of congress to receive as a matter of course?

All I want is the same health plan my senators and representative have access to.

Hekate
:argh:

[mousie]

39. done and kicked! Thanks!

[intheflow]

40. Done & K&R'd. n/t

[hopein08]

46. Done & kicked

[ezgoingrl]

47. DONE!!

eom