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A friend who is very alternative and taught me a lot over the years, for some reason decided to sign up with Kaiser. Not long after that she ended up with an anxiety attack and major depression and found herself in the ER at Kaiser here. They admitted her and spent 5 days almost in a coma state and when sent home, she had about 6-7 heart drugs....ends up she has afib. There are many ways to control afib besides a bunch of drugs.
She still feels Kaiser is good and the $50K bill from the 5 days spent there, she didn't pay a penny. She just got a cataract removed and said she is doing good.
I just spent 4.5 months in hospitals/rehabs and have a few piles of copays, deductibles that may never get paid off. I even had to file for Medical early on and was approved and they are picking up some bills that Medicare will not. Turns out I was given a Medical plan that has a $1005 deductible for each separate month one is in a rehab place. So I'm sitting here with $3015 in Medical deductibles.
My reason for the question is: Does Kaiser have their own rehab facilities for people who need extra care after the hospital stays. And again wonder how top notch Kaiser doctors are, do they draw a salary from Kaiser, I would guess so.
I'd love not to have this hassle of the bills from my 4.5 months from UCLA/rehabs. UCLA seemed to do a good job with me but it took them 2.5 months to FIND the infection in my knee and they handled moving me around from rehab to rehab since Medicare was running out. Thanks and I'll wait to hear more here.
And if only the medical/insurance industries were not the profit hogs they are as I've always liked to choose my own doctor. My integrative MD accepts Medicare and my copay ends up to be about $40 when I see her. I can handle that just fine. Medicare annual deductible is manageable but it goes up every year....
What hasn't gone up over recent decades? Including the stock market if you are in that world.
Last edited by PJSaturn; 06-05-2017 at 12:33 PM..
Reason: Defamatory comment.
My health care provider, Group Health, became part of Kaiser Permanente earlier this year. So far, we've been pleased with the service. My son was admitted to the hospital recently in an emergency and received excellent care. No charge to us as Kaiser members.
My mother belonged to Kaiser in the Bay Area for many decades, and they took care of her (and her dependents while we were minors) very well. My whole family has had nothing but good experiences as Kaiser members.
I've heard so many pros and cons on Kaiser and just found this info. And perhaps it's the closest to socialized medicine in the U.S. I'm not adverse to social medicine if it's quality medicine/care. And would like to see a lot of the profits taken out of health care. But someone has to profit as Kaiser is a business.
I've heard so many pros and cons on Kaiser and just found this info. And perhaps it's the closest to socialized medicine in the U.S. I'm not adverse to social medicine if it's quality medicine/care. And would like to see a lot of the profits taken out of health care. But someone has to profit as Kaiser is a business.
Our experience with the doctors and I am generalizing, I am sure there are many exceptions: they are either very new just out of med school and internship or they are older doctors that are not the top of the barrel to say the least. Here is just one example from experience or actually 2. I have many more: our daughter fell at school and injured her thumb. We go to ER, see the doctor, he takes x rays, says it is dislocated and can't really do much except he did put it back in place. Of course it her her very badly but it worked. About 2 weeks later we get a call from Kaiser telling us, a doctor looked at her x rays and wanted us to know she needed to come in to have her thumb put back in place. Hello: where was the slip up? It had already been done. The other time, our other daughter slipped and injured her ankle. She had done this several times before: torn ligaments. Anyway we took her to ER. The doctor confirmed it was a ligament problem. Someone had suggested she might need to be put in a cast for a while to help her ankle heal once and for all. When I mentioned this to the doctor he said: Oh I don't think you would want her to be in a cast forever, just so she doesn't continue injuring herself? I thought: where did he get the idea I wanted her to run around with a cast forever.
Everyone, please tread lightly. Remember that City-Data's Terms of Service do not permit you to post consumer complaints. This thread has been edited to remove defamatory comments.
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I like Kaiser, I've only been with them for two years but my experience has been great. My PCP is really good. I can email him and he gets back to me no later than the next day. I can view my lab and x-ray results on their website. I have bad knees and my doctor gave me an option, knee replacement surgery or try some other stuff first. I opted for the 'other stuff first', he gave me cortisone injections in both knees and made an appt. for physical therapy the same day. The physical therapist observed me walk and noticed how knock kneed I am and gave me exercises to help with that. It's only been a few months but one of my knees is much improved and the other hasn't gotten worse.
Unless you are going to be admitted to the hospital everything you need is in the same building. If you want to change your PCP you can do it online, you can look at a list of PCP's accepting new patients, read their biography and pick on. Your co-pays are all spelled out, usually $10 but it might depend on your particular plan. I don't think I will change, I had Anthem PPO Medicare Supplement before but I had an awful time getting appointments to in network specialists, they were booked up for months.
I have a relative who works for them. There are MANY different plans & HUGE differences based on your geographic area, what TYPE of plan (individual, group, etc) & a variety of other things. You should really research your local geographic situation. Some large areas don't even have Kaiser facilities & you just see a pre-approved set of drs (like a PPO), other areas have ONLY Kaiser facilities & you must see them.
It's impossible to generalize & you should be leery of any info that is not specific to both the plan, type of plan & geographic area that you would be in. Otherwise there are way too many variables to generalize.
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