Courtesy: Courtney Benefiel http://ridetoremedy.com/
"Every day, in the United States, more than 2000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed. Type II diabetes, the most prevalent form of diabetes worldwide, often shows few or even no symptoms!"
"Every day, in the United States, more than 2000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed. Type II diabetes, the most prevalent form of diabetes worldwide, often shows few or even no symptoms!"
For the past few months, most of the hospitals have been seeing a decline in certain patient populations. I find this to be an ominous sign indicative of the many job losses that have occurred over the past few years. People that could not afford the Cobra, went without insurance for many months and years unless they were able to get another job that supplied them with health and dental insurance.
The absence of insurance for people, leads many to go without learning if they have such underlying disease processes such as:
• Pre-diabetes
• Early stages of high blood pressure
• Untreated depression
• Late stage heart disease
Most people that are pre-diabetic learn of this during a routine blood tests when going for their yearly or periodic visits to their doctors for other ailments. Now, without insurance people avoid seeing the doctor due to the non-coverage, underinsurance, or being uninsured altogether. No job to pay for health care in general.
Early stages of high blood pressure go unnoticed, without seeing your doctor to check your blood pressure. Early stages of high blood pressure, can turn into very high blood pressure over a few days and or months. If you aren't treated for it, you run a very good risk of having your kidney's fail, and then you will be on Dialysis.
Untreated depression, is becoming a really big problem as well as undetected due to people not having insurance to see a doctor on a regular basis, or to follow-up with counseling. There are far more suicides now than ever before, and this is very unfortunate, when intervention could have improved the quality of these peoples’ lives and saved lives too.
Late stage heart disease caused by all the above, lack of insurance, or no insurance, costs out of reach due to pre-existing conditions. Undiagnosed high blood pressure, or pre-diabetic, and diabetic conditions left untreated and progressively worsen set-up an individual for all sorts chronic problems. Kidney damage is often the consequence of untreated heart disease, due to high blood pressure, and diabetes.
Not knowing what the new health care bill will provide for future insurability, it is no doubt an important issue that people have checkups regularly, if even to check your blood pressures at a County Health Clinic, along with a comprehensive metabolic panel (this covers all your electrolytes, kidney function tests, white blood cell counts, other important tests and a blood sugar. An A1C is a very good test to tell if you are pre-diabetic or are in the diabetic range.
Most counties have clinics that serve underinsured and uninsured people, and they will go on a sliding scale for payment. In fact, I recently went to have labs done at my local county health clinic, the labs cost me $12.25. To see the physician the cost for me was $40.00. They will tell you the cost of anything else that they suggest you need before you they provide the procedure. It's a very clean and organized environment. Once I get my insurance up and running, I would still go to this clinic. They take insurance as well.
Don't forgo your health due to a job loss where you lost your health benefits, there are other avenues that can bridge you till you get up and running again.
My concern now continues to be the obvious decline in certain patient populations in the hospitals over the past few months, the concern is that people are put in jeopardy with their health due to the years of job losses and insurance coverage. Controlling disease processes before they become serious, is very important. I sense we will get caught up in a huge influx of patients within the next year, as all the undiagnosed hypertensive, diabetic, heart failure patients surface in the emergency rooms across the country in End Stage Renal Disease. It will be a sad state of affairs.
If you know of someone that has a high risk, or even if they have been uninsured for over a year, to share with them this information. Go to the County Health Clinic nearest you to get a simple blood test and a check up with a physician. You'll be glad you did.
Diabetes today is a major problem in the UK and in the rest of the world; the treatment of which costs millions of pounds for which purchasing medical insurance for diabetics is a good solution.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but here in the United States if one has a pre-existing condition the insurance company raises the cost to an amount that a person with Diabetes is not able to purchase. The concern I have is people in general losing their jobs, lose their insurance and therefore, don't learn of conditions till it is too late. Thanks for the comment.
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