Health Care: I just turned 50, but when I was a kid, the dr. visited

[babylonsister]

my house. I was one of 5 kids, two parents, milk was delivered, as was mail, unless there was a blizzard which happened enough so I remember it. We were far from rich, but we were okay. The doctor wasn't an issue, nor was, to the best of my knowledge, health care. The doctor 'delivered', i.e. he showed up at my house.
Times change, but this drastically? Now, you are 'special', 'old', 'entitled', or "on welfare" to have insurance or none at all??
Makes me sad.

[Broken_Hero]

1. Yeah, its sad...

I'm only 28, and my dad is 63, so he has told me a bunch of his growing up stories, times, have changed...one of my dad favorite jokes is...this.

Remember, when the little snickers bites came out? When they did, the store was selling them for 5 cents, and my dad grabbed one, and he said "We haven't changed our price in over fifty years!"...I just about fell over dead laughing...:) He also told me that in his high school years, they had can food night at the movie theater, bring a can of food, and you get to see the movie....times, have changed...

[pnwmom]

2. I'm the same age, and he came to my house, too.

But on the day my baby sister woke up screaming with a high fever, our doctor had a day off, so his partner took the call. My mother, who had two older preschoolers, told the partner that she thought my sister was having convulsions. The only way to get into a hospital in those days was by having a doctor admit you -- there was no emergency room. This doctor dismissed my mother's concerns, so she stayed in the house for hours with a sick, crying baby until late in the afternoon when her regular doctor finally returned, and admitted my sister to the hospital. My mother was right about the convulsions. My sister had encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, and died the next day.

I could tell you many more stories, but the message would be the same. Yes, the health care system today is screwed up. But I'm not nostalgic for a return to the old days, either.

[babylonsister]

3. Welcome to DU, I think. I failed to tell

anyone about the first child my mom had, a brother I was told, who died of SIDS from what I know. My mom's 'job' was to have kids. She had 6 but lost the first one. She was also an orphan.
We all have stories or sob stories.

[Maddy McCall]

4. Just turned 40. Can remember when there was a dr. and a pharmacist...

in my home town. Now we have neither. :(

[Hardrada]

5. I'm 61 and when I was a child, I had pneumonia

and was in bed at home for two weeks and Dr. Olson came over every so often to see how I was doing and gave me a shot of penicillin. I remember hearing him talk to my folks outside the bedroom door. He would take my temperature and look at me very seriously and talk to me and sometimes I was almost too weak to respond. But his house calls pulled me through my illness. It sounds like an old movie plot, I know, and maybe I was one of the last kids to have benefited from house calls. I grew up and he also gave me my pre-college physical. He was always available. Perhaps it helped that my grandfather had a dental office in his small medical clinic but even so I miss that personal treatment a lot. One perhaps has to be quite wealthy these days for such service. This all changed sometime in the early 70's I think and the receptionists who asked for your insurance information suddenly interposed themselves.

[babylonsister]

6. House calls...what a concept. I guess they went the way of albums,

milk delivered, the really young ones don't know what they've missed; a doctor visiting was instant 'feel better' medicine. Someone, besides Mom, cared.

[Hardrada]

7. My grandfather (I was raised by my grandparents) also

did dental house calls (!). For elderly patients who could not leave their homes. Probably nobody can remember anything like that.

[dylan33]

8. I know

That some younger people will want to disagree but I think it was a more caring time. The Dr. was more worried about the patient and less about whether he was going to get his money.

[Hardrada]

9. It was a much more caring time

especially in a small town. But doctors in city neighborhoods paid house calls too. It was not all about the ability to pay in those days. And people were not quick to sue if the doctor's efforts were of no avail.

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. They could afford to care

Medicine wasn't on an assembly line then because there was no need to see X patients per day to afford malpractice insurance. Doctors also didn't have HMOs and PPOs dictating how and to whom they administered care, with the government's blessing.

My sister and I had the best pediatrician ever, Dr. Eugene Eldridge. I remember him making a house call circa 1961 when we both had chicken pox. I remember his red '55 or '56 Chevy wagon in front of the house.

When we saw him in his office, he didn't have to ask about our history or anything. He knew it.

[Hardrada]

12. It's INSURANCE again that forced this unhappy change also.

My God, what a hungry industry forcing us all into a Bataan-type death march until we are too old and they try to drop us by the wayside. They have way too much power and should be sternly regulated once sanity regains its throne.

[Daphne08]

10. I'm well over 50 and remember those days well.

You paid the doctor what you could even if it were only $2 or $3 a month. In the small town where I was raised, poor people often paid the doctor in food, crops or even wild game.

When I had my first son (my husband and I moved to larger city), my mother could not believe that we had to pay the bill up front before the doctor would even see my sick child.

Family members helped one another much more back then also. My own grandmother postponed her marriage and taught school for four years so that she could send extra money to her brother (my great uncle) who was studying for his university degree.

Milk was still being delivered (at least, in the South) into the '70s.

Yes, life is much different now...some postive changes and some that are not so positive.

[merbex]

13. I'll be 46 on Friday and I remember a doctor making a house call

I think I had strep throat/scarlet fever when I was 3

If you ever talk to a retired doctor who used to make house calls they'll tell you it helped them to see the conditions their patients lived in - kind of like a visit from the board of health once in a while

[w8liftinglady]

14. believe it or not,I know a doc who makes housecalls

one of the docs I worked with would go see his elderly shut-ins.He always joked that he was going to set up a booth at the flea market and have a sign that said "doctoring-$25 cash money".He was a good man(and a Democrat,of course)

[madinmaryland]

15. I'm 45 and remember house calls until I was in grade school.

Came several times as i recall.