I'm Baaaack - Norm almost breaks Medicare after 15 days at MSK Hospital for Pancreatic Cancer Surgery

Repost from EdNotes blog - ednotesonline.blogspot.com/

I've kept up with developments with the RA winning the election and now having office in the UFT building. Exciting stuff and I will follow this with more info on those events. But I wanted to update everyone about my condition after getting out of Memorial Sloan Kettering, yesterday, after 15 days. I think I set a record. And the food at MSK is not bad - unless you are on a liquid diet.

My last post (Can Unity Be Beaten in 2025 UFT Election? What was right and wrong with the UFC Coalition) was on Tuesday, June 25th shortly before I went to sleep the night before major surgery that would change my life permanently. I had hoped to blog from the operating table except for that damn stuff they knock you out with for a 6 hour operation. 

Can you have a good time recovering from massive surgery? Well, if you are at MSK it comes as close to heaven for a hospital, where the care and attention was extraordinary. You know, patients first as opposed to financial first. On Mulgrewcare they wheel you out of the operating room into an Uber - in the luxury version. The cheap version, down the subway stairs.

If you've heard anything about pancreatic cancer, it is fundamentally a death sentence for most since it is a silent killer sneaking up on people without warning until it's out of the box. Most cases are not operable, so the fact mine was put me in the game. But check out the graphic.You see that cute little pancreas. My tumor was in the neck, so the surgeon had to make a game-time decision with my tummy open whether the take the front end (a Whipple) or the back end (A Distal). 

Surgeon calling Aetna in mid-operation: Which Operation can I do?

AETNA: Whatever costs us less.

Well, he took the back end and the spleen which leaves me with a cute little ball of a pancreas. Believe it or not my surgery was considered the better option because the ducts to the digestive system are still there. Phew!

People who are pancreatic cancer survivors are getting in touch. My old UFT friend who died of esophagus cancer a few years ago has a brother my age who also had a distal and is a 5 year survivor. He's a retired physician and immensely helpful, especially about the upcoming chemo.

Winning RTC and para election was some compensation

I had symptoms since December but you don't run for CT scans when you have tummy aches. Still, the actual diagnosis on May 24 was like being hit by a bazooka, softened by the exciting UFT elections we won. And I was healthy for all of the exciting events. I was elected to the RTC Executive Board and expect to be as active as I can. I was lucky in that I caught the cancer a shade early so I have a shot, though looming chemo may kill parts of me.

The numbers of well wishers and visitors have made things bearable. 

Anyway, let's get to some really important stuff. Truly imagine if the Mulgrew/Unity machine had succeeded - you know, the constant Mulgrew drone that MedAdv is just Medicare Part C - a matter of names. He wished he could call it something else - like ScrewYouCare.

For me the opposition to MulgrewCare was not based on worries about my health which was decent --- I probably wouldn't have been affected much. But we always told people one day you will  get real sick. I didn't know my day was coming so soon. 

Did Marianne help save me from going through hell?

I went through an enormous number of test and scans and endoscopies over 6 weeks with a lot more to come. I have a stent in my stomach inserted with an endo and I need another endo to remove it. Leaking fluid has pooled under my stomach and must be drained so they connected the stomach to the fluid in a complicated endo.

UGH! I need another CT scan to see if it drained. I look pretty healthy - nothing like cancer to lose weight - I look sort of buff. The nurses kidded me about that. But my glow is probably from the radiation. Calling Aetna - how about approving like my 5th ct scan and 3rd complex endoscopy in a 6 week period?

Mulgrew’s bigger crime: contributing to the rape of traditional Medicare and proud of it by bragging: Look where we can get our 600 million a year - savaging medicare. 

Mulgrew at the trough with all the private insurers.

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Arthur has an important piece up exposing the upcoding schemes of MedAdv.  

Scamming the Government for Fun and Profit

Scamming the Government for Fun and Profit: The cancer that is Medicare Advantage

Medicare pays insurers more for sicker patients. So if you are pre-diabletic, they just upcode you to diabetic which nets them $2700 more a year. Now that I offiically have diabetes, if I had a MedAdv plan, they would scrape that much money out of Medicare. This is what Mulgrew wanted to see happen.

Instead of saving taxpayers money, Medicare Advantage has added tens of billions of dollars in costs, researchers and some government officials have said. One reason is that insurers can add diagnoses to ones that patients’ own doctors submit. Medicare gave insurers that option so they could catch conditions that doctors neglected to record. The Journal’s analysis, however, found many diagnoses were added for which patients received no treatment, or that contradicted their doctors’ views.

For my money, Aetna is a parasitical entity. So are all health insurance companies. We’d all be better off if we removed the profit motive from medical care.  

These private insurers are criminals - the health insurance mob. What a shame our own UFT leadership has decided to join them.

RICO, anyone?

Marianne's latest video:

UFT Propaganda on Healthcare - Facts Matter

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Norm Scott is a retired New York City public-school teacher and longtime unionist who taught for 35 years and was involved in three UFT strikes. He has participated in many UFT opposition caucuses since 1970 and has been the editor of Ed Notes (ednotesonline.blogspot.com) since 2006.

He is currently active with Retiree Advocate, a retiree caucus that recently defeated the Unity Caucus and now leads the 70,000-member UFT retiree chapter.

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