{"id":180,"date":"2012-10-17T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T03:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=180"},"modified":"2012-10-17T23:59:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T03:59:00","slug":"ear-reconstruction-service-and-rationing-us-v-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=180","title":{"rendered":"Ear reconstruction service and rationing, US v UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.royalfree.nhs.uk\/plastics.aspx?top_nav_id=1&amp;tab_id=880\">Ear reconstruction service<\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Recently I found out, by accident (ask me in person how), that my local BC\/BS carrier only pays for ear reconstruction if hearing is an issue, not for cosmetics. I was curious about whether <a href=\"http:\/\/cmhmd.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/UK%2FNHS\">England&#8217;s NHS<\/a> would be so, well, <a href=\"http:\/\/cmhmd.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Rationing%20Health%20Care\">&#8220;rationing&#8221;<\/a> of care. Turns out, they are OK with it. But remember, your insurer never denies the <b>procedure<\/b>, they just deny the payment! There, feel better?<\/i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ear reconstruction is considered as one of the most challenging  operations in plastic surgery. It is usually undertaken in specialist  centres, where, with the appropriate training and case availability it  is possible to attain excellent results. The majority of plastic  surgeons see 1-2 cases per year. In view of the rarity of the condition  specialist centres such as the Royal Free Hospital have developed to  provide a national tertiary referral service. Ear reconstruction is  requested by two main groups of patients: those who have an  underdeveloped ear at birth (a condition known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.royalfree.nhs.uk\/plastics.aspx?top_nav_id=1&amp;sel_left_nav=25&amp;tab_id=881\">microtia<\/a>) and those who have lost a normal ear through trauma, disease or previous surgery. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ear reconstruction service Recently I found out, by accident (ask me in person how), that my local BC\/BS carrier only pays for ear reconstruction if hearing is an issue, not &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=180\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ear reconstruction service and rationing, US v UK&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rationing-health-care","category-uk-nhs"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}