{"id":6371,"date":"2021-10-18T16:29:10","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T16:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6371"},"modified":"2021-10-18T16:29:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T16:29:10","slug":"its-time-to-stop-describing-lifesaving-health-care-as-elective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6371","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time to stop describing lifesaving health care as \u201celective\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Data shows that more than 90 percent of US surgeries<\/a> are considered elective or nonessential. Collectively, they bring the nation\u2019s health care system between $48 billion and $64 billion<\/a> of revenue per year. This is why so many hospital systems struggled financially in the early days of the pandemic: While beds filled with Covid-19 patients, many profitable services ground to a halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the definition of essential care has varied not only by health care provider, insurance company, and hospital system, but also by the state, city, or town that a person happens to live in. Some conditions are clearly emergencies, such as a rupturing appendix. But \u201cnonessential\u201d does not necessarily mean something purely cosmetic like a rhinoplasty or tummy tuck. During the pandemic, Sakran said, he has had to postpone surgeries to repair hernias that impede people from comfortably eating or walking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The logistical difficulty of defining essential care has been \u201can ongoing challenge for insurance companies,\u201d said Jesse Ehrenfeld, a physician and LGBTQ health advocate who chairs the American Medical Association board of trustees. It \u201cleads to a lot of individual decision-making happening that is inconsistent.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22678393\/elective-surgery-nonessential-trans-gender-affirming-hysterectomy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Data shows that more than 90 percent of US surgeries are considered elective or nonessential. Collectively, they bring the nation\u2019s health care system between $48 billion and $64 billion of revenue per year. This is why so many hospital systems struggled financially in the early days of the pandemic: While beds filled with Covid-19 patients, many profitable services ground to a halt.<\/p>\n

Yet the definition of essential care has varied not only by health care provider, insurance company, and hospital system, but also by the state, city, or town that a person happens to live in. Some conditions are clearly emergencies, such as a rupturing appendix. But \u201cnonessential\u201d does not necessarily mean something purely cosmetic like a rhinoplasty or tummy tuck. During the pandemic, Sakran said, he has had to postpone surgeries to repair hernias that impede people from comfortably eating or walking.<\/p>\n

The logistical difficulty of defining essential care has been \u201can ongoing challenge for insurance companies,\u201d said Jesse Ehrenfeld, a physician and LGBTQ health advocate who chairs the American Medical Association board of trustees. It \u201cleads to a lot of individual decision-making happening that is inconsistent.\u201d”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-6371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6372,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371\/revisions\/6372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}