Tweety, 'some' doctors do procedures just to make money!!!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

You pay per stitch. Tweety thinks that doctors don't. I think Obama's example was good.

[rurallib]

1. Uh-oh. Tweety's catching on to a deep dark secret.

[stray cat]

4. Not so deep - straight out in the open and in everyones faces - but people believe their doctors

many doctors especially specialists want to make a good living and that means as many procedures as possible whether needed or not in some cases.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Yes, Obama wasn't talking about procedures in general

He was talking about unnecessary or duplicate procedures. Especially, when a patient is handed off from one doctor to another.

[stray cat]

3. Doctors get paid for procedures - even doctors say its one of the biggest financial abuses

that needs to be overhauled if we ever want a real health care plan.

[Mojorabbit]

17. A small segment may do so

but most people trust their docs and it would have been more productive to go after the insurance companies. Still in all it was a good press conference.

[ecstatic]

5. True. I challenged mine though, and BCBS acted pretty quickly

I felt bad for not talking to the doc about it first so I called BCBS to withdraw the complaint the very next day. But I still received a "new" bill for 1000 less :wow: Needless to say, I'm in between doctors now.

[Orsino]

6. Some TV hosts lie just to make money.

Some do it a lot.

[Hansel]

7. I worked in County Social Services in the 70s

and knew the fraud investigators. By far, the highest dollar fraud cases prosecuted were of doctors getting unlawful reimbursements from medical aid for services they did not perform or overcharging for services they did. There were doctors who specialized in treating people on AFDC because it was so lucrative and the recipients had neither the power or wherewithal to protest.

It would not take much at all to reap huge savings in medical aid and medicare by setting standards on procedures and tests and by throwing a few more investigators at suspicious activities.

There is no one more disgusting than people who steal from the weakest and poorest among us. This sums up why I started to hate the Republican party. Reagan and Paul Harvey talking about "welfare queens" wearing furs and driving Cadillacs while their buddies and wealthy constituents robbed the system blind. Disgusting.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. this has been around for a long time

but people chose to ignore it at their peril. I guess with the economy as it is people are starting to realize.

[busymom]

9. True, but let's not forget that some patients

come in demanding MRIs for every ache and pain, expensive new drugs that they read about on the internet or saw ads for on television or insist on prescriptions for antibiotics despite having a viral infection.

Not all doctors are cheating bastards and not all patients are demanding pains-in-the behind...but there is abuse on both sides.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

10. sure

but in a real system they wouldn't be having MRIs for toothaches. The PCP farms off patients to secondary care with ease.

[hedgehog]

11. THere's a word that can be applied to such demanding patients: No

If the doctor can't say no, he or she shouldn't be practicing.

[Imajika]

13. They have to be concerned about lawsuits...

Patients often know certain keywords they can use to demand every test under the sun. In our current system, doctors are often afraid to say no.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

15. Healthcare shouldn't have been allowed to get like this

[busymom]

16. Exactly....

Here, every patient that comes to the ER with abdominal pain now gets a CT. The docs are not pushing it....but feel forced because of litigation concerns. This means that every person who comes in with constipation gets screened with an expensive CT. And...CTs aren't even the best tool for determining appendicitis (which is often trying to be ruled out)...it is just simply becoming the standard of care to avoid lawsuits due to missing something.

People like to blame someone when something goes wrong. Most recent case? Woman felt a small lump in her breast while showering....went to the doc who could not feel anything...had a mammogram which revealed nothing. The radiologist told her to continue to do breast exams and come back in 3 months for a repeat if she continued to feel this but noted that there was nothing visible on the mammogram. The woman went to another doctor (a surgeon) who was able to feel something extremely small when led straight to it by the patient. She biopsied it and it was a malignancy in its earliest possible stage. It was removed, required no radical treatment like a mastectomy or chemotherapy because she was quite fortunate. She became enraged....enraged...that the radiologist hadn't picked it up.

The case was reviewed. There was NO evidence of anything on her mammogram. The woman sued despite the fact that she had no damages, and the hospital settled....NOT because the dr had done something wrong, but because it was more expensive to litigate the case than simply settle it.


This kind of stuff increases costs too...

[Vinca]

12. Some doctors have arrangements with laboratories so they get a cut

of every blood test that is ordered. Needless to say, some patients lose a whole lot of blood.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

14. yes