Romney: People Don't Die For Lack Of Insurance

[Speedy]

Grateful, there are reasons your son did not have coverage but it wasn't because of you. He would have qualified for both Medicaid and Medicare because of his disability and income. Unfortunately, it seems, based on my experience, that hospitals and othe providers are woefully ignorant about these options. Providers are great at dealing with insurance stuff if you have it but are of no help in setting you up with what insurances may be available. Medicare actually requires hospitals to get people into its program. I believe that hospitals are reimbursed to make this happen. But the hospital has to make the connection between a patient who may be eligible and the Medicare program however providers almost always fail to identify qualified patients with disabilities. Much easier to identify a 65 year old as Medicare eligible.

[Surfrider]

You tried your best, I don't think anyone would say you were responsible for the results.

Trying our best is the best we can do, after that it's out of our hands.

God bless you and your wife.

[Grateful11]

Thanks everyone. I know that I shouldn't blame myself but it's hard not to think what if. It's been almost
15 months now and it has gotten somewhat easier to deal with. Anyone that has lost a loved one will
tell you the Holidays are the worst times to deal with, I just hope this years Holidays are a lot easier to
deal with than last.

Speedy you are correct in that the hospitals do very little to help acquire financial help. Basically they just
told my wife where to go and what to file for and while Jesse was in the hospital she spent nearly 2 days
being tossed back and forth at Social Services trying desperately to get some kind of help. In the end he
was totally denied any help what so ever. Luckily the hospital he spent most of the time at had a 58 million
dollars in donated funds to take care of such cases. They went through his $50K insurance policy limit in
less than a day. His bills totaled more than $500,000 for 8 days. The first hospital he went to is still trying collect
$25K that racked up while in the ER for about 2 hours before being transferred by a critical care team to Charlotte.
Our family attorney told us that we were not responsible for any of Jesse's medical bills because he was an
adult. This was something that we had no idea of until we went to talk to him about what to do about the
bills that started coming in fairly quickly. He told us to ignore the phone calls and just get a box and and
put all the bills in. I finally caved and started answering the phone because I couldn't deal with nearly
daily barrage of phone calls. After talking to many of them they were quite understanding and most only
needed a copy of the death certificate to write off the bills.

[Speedy]

I'm glad you got a lawyer to ease your mind on all those bills. You don't need that hassle. Best wishes.