A retiree's personal experience - If you have a stroke, you may be left out in the cold

(Suzanne S. Hildebrand, wife of retiree Ray Hildebrand
sends us this personal message and urges everyone
to review how much health care coverage they have.
This could happen to ANY of us:)

As we come up on 8 months since Ray's stroke,
much has occurred.

As you know, at the time of his stroke, there was no
hospital in Bexar County that was set up to take
stroke patients; there were no neurologists or
neurosurgeons on call at any of the hospitals.

We, therefore, after 7 1/2 hours, were airlifted
to Breckenridge in Austin. We lost valuable
treatment time that resulted in almost
catastrophic damage.

As a result of the lack of treatment for stroke victims,
I went on the offensive and decided to go public with the
abominable condition our health system was in.

We beat our chests in Bexar County about our
outstanding health care facilities; we have heart
hospitals, transplant hospitals, diabetes clinics,
BUT we had nothing in place to deal with
strokes which go hand-in-hand with heart
and diabetes.

After the first story came out, I received over 300
phone calls from people with similar horror stories
about the woefully lacking care being provided.

As a result, Baptist Hospital System launched
a stroke education program and is in the process
of getting its hospitals certified as comprehensive
stroke centers.

Now if a person presents with a stroke, there are
plans in place to treat them immediately.

Another thing I learned is that the city's
insurance only provided $5000 a year for
rehabilitation.

When you learn that most inpatient rehab costs
a minimum of $1500 a day, that $5000 is
laughable. Rehab should be allocated in
days not dollars.

I am told that is now being corrected for the
upcoming year.

One thing I would like to urge all of you to do,
is to re-evaluate your insurance coverage.
Many, like us, believed that his Medicare and
his city insurance would provide all that we
needed. WRONG -

Everyone needs to make sure they have
additional long term care and rehabilitation
coverage in addition to the City and Medicare.

Suzanne S. Hildebrand