Skyrocketing costs for Health Care

[BenMarbleMD]

the skyrocketing health care costs are almost entirely due to the practice of 'defensive medicine' which is driven by frivolous lawsuits....eliminate frivolous lawsuits and health care costs will normalize i.e. scumbag lawyers and insurance companies are 'the problem' bc they are allowed to act as leeches sucking the life out of the health care system when they really shouldn't even have a seat at the table

Have you considered "scumbag" doctors and medicare fraud in your conclusion as one exception, or is that negligible in terms of "frivolous lawsuits" and "'defensive medicine"'?

I wonder if the expotential expansion of big pharma television ads has anything to with the cost of healthcare? Do doctors in general give patients drugs simply because the patient asks? Do "scumbag doctors" write prescriptions based on sound medicine or do the perks of sales reps have an effect?

The drug sales rep perk days have ENDED i.e. all that is illegal now but your points are somewhat valid. Due to the nature of 'defensive medicine' a doctor can not practice without practicing defensive medicine or they will eventually be unemployed by of the hospital lawyers/administration. Most people would assume that doctors dictate the 'standard of care' in medicine but that assumption is wrong. The 'standard of care' in a de facto 'defensive medicine' system is based on the most recent lost lawsuit. The legal system is controlled by judges aka former lawyers. Now there are plenty of good lawyers. For example, my brother is a great lawyer if that makes ya'll feel better about it. Anyway the current medical laws are written BY LAWYERS with the best interest of LAWYERS in mind...NOT the best interest of patients! The AMA has basically been mute in this entire debate primarily bc they are owned by big pharma. That is why the overwhelming majority of physicians have canceled their membership in the AMA. I know that was a large part of why I canceled my membership. So basically doctors have had little to no input in this alleged 'health care' debate. And the lawyers write the medical laws to ensure that the lawyers get to keep the goose that laid the golden lawsuit egg bc if an attorney loses 100 frivolous suits the lawyer still becomes wealthy bc he gets to bill for all 100 cases! As the frivolous lawsuits pile up doctors are forced to order 10 tests when a patient really only needs 1......The increased costs associated with the increased testing are passed on to the insurance companies which eats in to their bottom line. So in turn the insurance companies are always increasing the patient's premiums. And the insurance companies create this always evolving 'code lingo' that if you as the physician don't document the correct 'code lingo' on the patients chart then they can legally deny to pay the claim. The problem is the 'code lingo' like I already said is always mutating so the doctors can NOT keep up with the latest code. The doctors have a choice to make: they can read about the latest greatest medical TREATMENTS for their patients OR they can waste their time trying to read up on the latest 'code lingo' so they and/or the hospital can BILL more. The hospitals, of course, reward the doctors who become 'code lingo' monkeys who write a 10 page NOVEL about a 2 minute patient encounter for a patient chart bc they are making the hospital money. The end result is that the lawyers have their wet dreams come true with this DEFENSIVE MEDICINE SCAM bc the insurance companies have to hire....LAWYERS!
The hospitals have to hire...............................................LAWYERS!
The doctors have to hire.................................................LAWYERS!
The patients have to hire................................................LAWYERS!

Defensive medicine in the USA is probably the single most succesful SCAM of all time! But letting it continue as is is pure insanity! Obamacare rewards the defensive medical system and as such it is doomed to failure!

It is estimated that doctors and nurses spend approx. 50% of our time working on 'patient charts'. I could bitch about that forever but I'll keep it short. If we remove the lawyers & insurance companies from the equation we could redirect that 50% of our time to taking care of sick people instead of playing into the lawyers CHARADE! The only way to do this is with the 'single payer option' where there is NO INSURANCE. But it must also include a NO LAWSUIT clause. This would remove the scumbag lawyers and scumbag insurance companies from the health care equation. Doctors and nurses could actually spend their time taking care of sick people, ER wait times would be cut in half, frivolous lawsuits would end,etc......

So what is the primary underlying problem preventing this from being changed?
Politicians make the laws and over 85% of politicians are LAWYERS
so LAWYERS are 'the problem' and we expect them to fix it???? It ain't going to happen!


so Ill give you an ex.

Imagine a 56 year old non-drinking non-drug addict non-smoking 6 ft. tall 160 pound white male long distance marathon runner with no family history of heart disease. This man falls asleep laying face down in a bed with 1 tack laying in it & later awakens with 1 tack embedded in his chest & immediately pulls the tack out. Then for some reason he decides to go to the er and complain of 'chest pain'. He tells the triage nurse his chest hurts so he suddenly BYPASSES every other patient waiting in the ER & is put back into a room to get his 'EKG' within the mandated 10 minute FEDERAL guidelines. In 9 out of 10 ER's this man doesn't leave without getting:

CBC, CHEM 14, CPK, CK-MB, Troponin, CXR, EKG, IV, Aspirin, etc.....with a bill somewhere around $3,000-4,000 when in reality he shouldn't have been moved up to the front of the line and really needed NO TESTS at all. If that scenario were presented doctors who don't order the tests will eventually get fired bc the hospital LAWYERS say it 'has to be done'.
In summation, it is my belief that DEFENSIVE MEDICINE is the primary cause of increasing health care costs and as such it must be ABOLISHED so that we doctors may actually be allowed to spend time taking care of our patients instead of having to write novels for the leeches that want to suck the life out of the health care system. Let the scumbag lawyers and insurance companies go make their money elsewhere!

 

[urdrwho]

My 87 year old mother told her doctor she was constipated. Instead of the doc saying try some prune juice, some flax seed meal, etc. he tells her she needs a colonoscopy. So she starts the prep procedure which is like a nuclear laxative. At 4PM she looses it and makes a mess in the bathroom and slips on the (yes you know what). Falls and breaks her arm. Now 87 year old mom has a broken arm. Plus there is always the risk of perforating the colon during a colonoscopy and that can lead to problems and possible death. Colonoscopy is clean. I talked her into taking Probiotics and flax seed meal. Last report is no more constipation.

Her 90 year old husband had a high PSA return and the doc worries about prostrate cancer. SO the doctor puts him on a drug to lower the PSA level. It lowered it but last week he spent 4 days in the hospital because the drug was killing his liver. He was jaundice looking, tired and in bad shape from that drug. Doc took him off the drug.

So you have two elderly people that the docs defensive med put them at greater risk. A borken hip would have been much worse for my mom. If a 90 year old man has prostrate cancer, it will most likely move slow and he will die from something else. SO let the poor guy alone! You almost killed him with those meds.

But docs worry about their malpractice taking a hit from some attorney. Too many hits and the doc can no longer get malpractice insurance and is basically out of business.

The day the Bar allowed personal injury attorney's to have TV advertisements was the first day of defensive medicine.

Attorneys are still jumping on the $600 billion asbestos gravy train. The military used a lot of it but there was nothing else to use back then. Would it have been better for fires to start on the ships, etc. and the people died at sea?

Take the magical money making wand from the personal attorney and it will be a start to fix a lot of ills in this nation.

the skyrocketing health care costs are almost entirely due to the practice of 'defensive medicine' which is driven by frivolous lawsuits....eliminate frivolous lawsuits and health care costs will normalize i.e. scumbag lawyers and insurance companies are 'the problem' bc they are allowed to act as leeches sucking the life out of the health care system when they really shouldn't even have a seat at the table

Have you considered "scumbag" doctors and medicare fraud in your conclusion as one exception, or is that negligible in terms of "frivolous lawsuits" and "'defensive medicine"'?

I wonder if the expotential expansion of big pharma television ads has anything to with the cost of healthcare? Do doctors in general give patients drugs simply because the patient asks? Do "scumbag doctors" write prescriptions based on sound medicine or do the perks of sales reps have an effect?

The drug sales rep perk days have ENDED i.e. all that is illegal now but your points are somewhat valid. Due to the nature of 'defensive medicine' a doctor can not practice without practicing defensive medicine or they will eventually be unemployed by of the hospital lawyers/administration. Most people would assume that doctors dictate the 'standard of care' in medicine but that assumption is wrong. The 'standard of care' in a de facto 'defensive medicine' system is based on the most recent lost lawsuit. The legal system is controlled by judges aka former lawyers. Now there are plenty of good lawyers. For example, my brother is a great lawyer if that makes ya'll feel better about it. Anyway the current medical laws are written BY LAWYERS with the best interest of LAWYERS in mind...NOT the best interest of patients! The AMA has basically been mute in this entire debate primarily bc they are owned by big pharma. That is why the overwhelming majority of physicians have canceled their membership in the AMA. I know that was a large part of why I canceled my membership. So basically doctors have had little to no input in this alleged 'health care' debate. And the lawyers write the medical laws to ensure that the lawyers get to keep the goose that laid the golden lawsuit egg bc if an attorney loses 100 frivolous suits the lawyer still becomes wealthy bc he gets to bill for all 100 cases! As the frivolous lawsuits pile up doctors are forced to order 10 tests when a patient really only needs 1......The increased costs associated with the increased testing are passed on to the insurance companies which eats in to their bottom line. So in turn the insurance companies are always increasing the patient's premiums. And the insurance companies create this always evolving 'code lingo' that if you as the physician don't document the correct 'code lingo' on the patients chart then they can legally deny to pay the claim. The problem is the 'code lingo' like I already said is always mutating so the doctors can NOT keep up with the latest code. The doctors have a choice to make: they can read about the latest greatest medical TREATMENTS for their patients OR they can waste their time trying to read up on the latest 'code lingo' so they and/or the hospital can BILL more. The hospitals, of course, reward the doctors who become 'code lingo' monkeys who write a 10 page NOVEL about a 2 minute patient encounter for a patient chart bc they are making the hospital money. The end result is that the lawyers have their wet dreams come true with this DEFENSIVE MEDICINE SCAM bc the insurance companies have to hire....LAWYERS!
The hospitals have to hire...............................................LAWYERS!
The doctors have to hire.................................................LAWYERS!
The patients have to hire................................................LAWYERS!

Defensive medicine in the USA is probably the single most succesful SCAM of all time! But letting it continue as is is pure insanity! Obamacare rewards the defensive medical system and as such it is doomed to failure!

It is estimated that doctors and nurses spend approx. 50% of our time working on 'patient charts'. I could bitch about that forever but I'll keep it short. If we remove the lawyers & insurance companies from the equation we could redirect that 50% of our time to taking care of sick people instead of playing into the lawyers CHARADE! The only way to do this is with the 'single payer option' where there is NO INSURANCE. But it must also include a NO LAWSUIT clause. This would remove the scumbag lawyers and scumbag insurance companies from the health care equation. Doctors and nurses could actually spend their time taking care of sick people, ER wait times would be cut in half, frivolous lawsuits would end,etc......

So what is the primary underlying problem preventing this from being changed?
Politicians make the laws and over 85% of politicians are LAWYERS
so LAWYERS are 'the problem' and we expect them to fix it???? It ain't going to happen!


so Ill give you an ex.

Imagine a 56 year old non-drinking non-drug addict non-smoking 6 ft. tall 160 pound white male long distance marathon runner with no family history of heart disease. This man falls asleep laying face down in a bed with 1 tack laying in it & later awakens with 1 tack embedded in his chest & immediately pulls the tack out. Then for some reason he decides to go to the er and complain of 'chest pain'. He tells the triage nurse his chest hurts so he suddenly BYPASSES every other patient waiting in the ER & is put back into a room to get his 'EKG' within the mandated 10 minute FEDERAL guidelines. In 9 out of 10 ER's this man doesn't leave without getting:

CBC, CHEM 14, CPK, CK-MB, Troponin, CXR, EKG, IV, Aspirin, etc.....with a bill somewhere around $3,000-4,000 when in reality he shouldn't have been moved up to the front of the line and really needed NO TESTS at all. If that scenario were presented doctors who don't order the tests will eventually get fired bc the hospital LAWYERS say it 'has to be done'.
In summation, it is my belief that DEFENSIVE MEDICINE is the primary cause of increasing health care costs and as such it must be ABOLISHED so that we doctors may actually be allowed to spend time taking care of our patients instead of having to write novels for the leeches that want to suck the life out of the health care system. Let the scumbag lawyers and insurance companies go make their money elsewhere!

 

[BenMarbleMD]

for example...
I see commercials all the time from lawyers who want clients to sue if they have taken medicines that are currently FDA approved and still on the market...like Flagyl/Levaquin etc...this is not for meds that WERE FDA approved and later removed due to being unsafe...it is for meds that are still FDA approved/still on the market...so the govt. tells doctors these drugs are 'safe' and ok to prescribe but then the govt allows attorneys to sue those doctors for doing what the govt. told them was ok to do....it is truly insane!