bullwinkle
Gold Member
- Mar 4, 2013
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I'm sorry your gramps had such a problem for a procedure that was so simple for me. Infection from a lens implant sounds like sloppy work to me. My sister has Macular Degeneration and gets shots in the eye every six weeks. She tells me the first was the worst, but now she tolerates them very well. Of course she's just a squirt of 78 years.I thought those drops came with the surgery. I was given mine with my go-home kit. I have Medicare plus coordinating coverage so maybe there's a difference. The surgery was a piece of cake for me. In at 1PM, procedure at 2PM during which the team, including me, discussed the DaVinci Code movie, then recovery for about 20 min, then home by 3PM. No after-effects. The main problem is that they do the eyes one at a time, so until you get back to surgery vision is clear and you can see the color blue again in one eye, and the other is still like looking thru a greasy nicotine covered lens. Biggest benefit is headlights coming at you at night are no longer huge starbursts.Medicare pays for cataract surgery.
“Cataracts are more common in older people. By the age of 80, more than fifty percent of the population will have developed cataracts.”
Free stuff! Can’t wait until every doctor visit is like a meeting with the IRS!
Thousands of elderly people in Britain are left to go blind because of rationing of eye surgery in the National Health Service (NHS), a report revealed on Saturday (April 6).
The Times newspaper said a survey by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) found tens of thousands of elderly people are left struggling to see because of an NHS cost-cutting drive that relies on them dying before they can qualify for cataract surgery.
The survey has found that the NHS has ignored instructions to end cataract treatment rationing in defiance of official guidance two years ago.
The RCO said its survey has found 62 per cent of eye units retain policies that require people’s vision to have deteriorated below a certain point before surgery is funded.
Thousands in Britain left to go blind due to eye surgery rationing: Report
We have rationing in this country, too. It's called "being too poor to get good insurance", or "Your insurance company declaring your cataract a pre-existing condition or elective".
So given you only have so much money to spend on Cataract Surgery do you give it to.
A poor young person who has a whole productive life ahead of him.
or and Old person who isn't working anymore, will probably die in a few years anyway.
My gramps had his done through medicare. IIRC the only issue was the expensive drops afterwards were not covered but my dad's doc loaded him up with free samples from the drug companies.
My gramps had just plain medicare, no supplement and it was before part D and he was paying a all the drops out of pocket other than the ones they sent him home with that had just enough in them to get the prescription filled.. My dad's situation was a little different. The doc said that he thought it was ridiculous how much the pharmacies charged so he strongarmed them out of one of the drug reps. One of his eyes went south fast and the doctor was swallowing coal and crapping diamonds. I had to take him out of state to a specialist a couple times a week for a month. It was never quite clear what it really was. The eye doc said infection set up behind the lens due to contamination of the lens implant. The specialist was a little eye rolly about that, but saved his eye and restored his vision. None of all that after the original procedure on that eye cost my dad a dime and he never got an EOB on it from his insurance so I am pretty certain eye doc was paying for it out of his own pocket to avoid a major malpractice lawsuit. It involved lasers and needles through the eye. The specialist said, "Oh you can come on back if you want. Today it will just be a needle in the eye." I told him unless he was prepared to pick me up off the floor,while putting that needle in his eye, I was perfectly content waiting in the lobby.