HMO Update by vibr8 Blog entry

Blog: Vibrational Health Village
by vibr8

HMO Update

good news on the employment front

Date: 6/12/2007 3:22:38 AM ( 14 y ) ... viewed 1822 times

Amazing news at work: my employer, with hundreds of employees, decided to drop Kaiser Permanente. Poof. Just like that. As of July 1, we are not with Kaiser Permanente. Although many of the employees here were fairly happy with the KP Clinics they were going to, and had pretty decent primary care providers, I was having a consistently horrible experience with KP myself. It's not like I didn't give KP a chance. My son, who's almost 30 now, was born at a KP hospital. I had KP Insurance before there even was such a thing as an HMO. If that makes any sense...

I did not have KP insurance that whole 30 years, as I worked at several different jobs, and was in college for four of those years as well. That was actually the best health care I had...the college clinic. I pretty much had always used allopathic health care for preventative visits only, until I got older and KP kept giving me diagnosis after diagnosis based on lab tests but no apparent personal knowledge of me. Just impersonal and abrupt visits and lab tests.

That's actually how I ended up finding CureZone; a friend told me about it, and I've found so much here that has helped me to feel that there's hope of a life not tethered to pharmaceutical solutions to semi-bogus diagnoses aimed at increasing the wealth of the big pharma.

As I tell the KP people, when they'll listen, I am not a walking collection of diagnoses, I am a human being.

The more I've chosen to adhere to this natural health/alternative health path, the more KP employs tactics such as sending me registered letters with a strangely threatening tone about how I'm not coming in for mammograms, pap tests, and blood tests for cholesterol, etc. on a regular basis as their patients are supposed to. I'm sure the ultimate purpose of the registered letters is to absolve KP of any liability. That's one of the primary aims of most companies these days, as America has gotten so litigious.

I do want to make an appointment to go in and say goodbye to my primary care provider prior to July 1, as basically she is a decent human being, and also because I want closure and want to put something in my own writing into my medical record about my choice to pursue alternate methods to deal with the diagnoses they've given me. I'm happy to get one more blood testing at KP, but will opt to wait until I have a new doctor (our new HMO allows us to have a choice of many practitioners in the greater metro area, including some Osteopaths) to arrange for such things as Mammography. I have actually heard from my friend who I buy my wonderful seaweed elixir from that a person can get Thermograms (sp?) which do not emit radiation and can check the body for possible tumors and such on a regular basis. I would really rather do that if possible.

There's other medical testing that KP has been hounding me to do because of my family's medical history, and I will carefully look into what I will or won't do based on balanced research of harm vs. benefit.

Meanwhile, I continue to eat healthy. I continue my research into healthy eating. I go to the raw food potlucks which are plentiful in my community. I do not eat all raw, though I do believe that is the healthiest possible diet there is, when nutrient-rich organic produce is the core component.

I take vitamins, I see my bioenergetic practitioner regularly, I exercise, although not as much as I'd like to.

Slowly but surely, I'm making progress toward improved health. Weight loss is still a focus for me. It's important for me to love and accept myself as I am in the present moment, though, and I do. That's been a journey.

I really like the freedom of choice the new HMO provides. I don't spend much time in medical offices, but it's nice to have a choice, and especially to have a choice that doesn't involve a minimum 20 mile drive for most medical care available.

I checked for criticisms/negative comments about my new HMO on the internet. There's not much complaint about the new HMO. There are huge volumes of complaints about KP.

It's too bad, because at the time my son was born 30 years ago, KP was pretty decent. A lot can happen over 30 years, I suppose.

I wish them all well. The KP people. Whatever it is that makes interacting with KP so unpleasant seems to trickle down from the top. The corporate level.

Such is life these days.