Healthcare Hullabaloo: Poor Timmy!

I recall watching the old black and white ‘Lassie’ TV serial as a kid. I also remember being bored by it even as a youngster.

You see, even as a youngster I realized that the show’s writers were lazy. Practically every show followed the same old contrite formula:

Little Timmy would go out exploring on the Family Farm with his sidekick, Lassie the Dog.

Little Timmy would fall down an old well (or abandoned mine shaft, or into an old cave – whatever) and break his leg. Because he was injured, and out of plain sight, he had no hope of rescue. Egads!

In a flash of inspiration, Timmy would send Lassie to ‘Go get help!’

Meanwhile, back on the farm, Mr. & Mrs. Miller, Timmy’s adoptive parents, were getting worried – it was getting dark outside, and Timmy and Lassie were no where to be found (‘It’s not like him to stay out so late – I’m getting worried’ Timmy’s mother would lament.)

Timmy’s father would go looking for them, perhaps with some neighbors and farm hands, but they would always return to the farm empty-handed. Timmy’s mother would burst into tears.

Meanwhile, back in the cave, Timmy would either shiver in the cold or whimper in pain. Sometimes he would do both.

Cut to stock footage of Lassie running through farms and fields. Sometimes she would be waylaid by some angry farmer or overly earnest dog catcher, but she would always escape and make her way back to the Martin farm.

Lassie would burst into the farmhouse and communicate, nonverbally, with Timmy’s parents as to the whereabouts and medical status of their adopted son. (What is it girl? Is it Timmy? He fell down a well? He’s hurt?)

Lassie would tug on someone’s pants leg. Somebody else would state the obvious – “Why, I think she wants us to follow her!

Lassie would lead them to Timmy. Timmy’s dad would carry him back to the farmhouse. The kindly old town doctor would arrive in his horse and buggy and set Timmy’s broken leg. “He’s going to be just fine!” he would announce after leaving Timmy’s bedside. Timmy would be lying in his bed, hugging his beloved dog saying “You saved my life, girl! I love you so much!”

Fade out to a commercial for some toy that was later recalled as a choking hazard….

The same old plot – week after week.

LASSIE FUN FACT #1: Timmy’s TV Mom was originally played by famous funny girl Cloris Leachman (aka Frau Blücher – whineaaaaaaa!) Cloris left after season one due to a contract dispute.

LASSIE FUN FACT #2: Timmy’s second TV Mom was played by June Lockheart, who later went on to play another TV Mom, June Robinson in ‘Lost in Space’. While this T series was arguably much more successful than ‘Lassie’, at least the ‘Lassie’ show had a decent family pet – a nice collie dog instead of Bloop, the space chimp with the bad wig and funny ears. No one ever accused ‘Lost in Space’ of being over produced.

LASSIE FUN FACT #3: The animal actress that played ‘Lassie’ was actually a female. Somehow, I always thought the collie was a male. Who could tell, between those tiny B&W screens and all of that collie hair?

Well, recalling these old Lassie shows, I have now come to realize how lucky Timmy was. Not just because he had such a great dog, but because he broke his leg on the family farm and not in New Jersey. Let me explain.

In a recent letter that I received from my auto insurance company. it was stated that the average fee billed for fixing a broken leg injured in an auto accident in New Jersey was well over $17,000. Medicare pays less than $2,000 for the exact same procedure. While we must accept that Medicare’s tightly controlled fees are usually less than a physicians regular fees, we need to ask ‘why do doctors charge 900% more to fix a leg that was broken in an auto accident?’

The simple answer is, they can. You see, unlike most medical procedures performed on auto accident victims, the repair of a broken leg is not covered by the State’s predefined fee schedule. As a non-scheduled item, doctors can charge whatever they want for repairing a broken leg – and they do. They look at this as a loophole in the NJ Auto fee schedule – they may have to accept lower than normal fees for treating auto accident injuries for the services that are on the fee schedule, they can make up some of the difference by charging much higher fees for non-schedule procedures.

This is the NJ medical communities version of the infamous $640 toilet seat and $436 hammer. The problem is that doctors have to charge the same amount to their regular patients as they charge the auto insurance companies for these non-scheduled procedures. Which means, if you’re not a member of an HMO or on Medicare, you’re going to be charged over $17,000 to fix your broken leg in New Jersey.

For the poor Martin family, this is probably more then their old farm was worth back in the 1950’s. (With the current state of Real Estate, it definitely is more than the farm is worth today!). Which means that the Martin’s would have been faced with a very difficult decision. Faced with losing their farm, they would have most likely been forced to shoot the dog to keep her quiet, and leave poor Timmy to rot in that well.

Like many families today, they would have been forced to make a medical decision based upon purely fiscal reasons.

And, like Lassie, that’s really a bitch.

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