Would Docs Pick Cash Grabs Over Patient Health?

[MannyGoldstein]

From The NY Times' Weighing the Costs of a CT Scan’s Look Inside the Heart:

"A group of cardiologists recently had a proposition for Dr. Andrew Rosenblatt, who runs a busy heart clinic in San Francisco: Would he join them in buying a CT scanner, a $1 million machine that produces detailed images of the heart?...

Although tempted, Dr. Rosenblatt was reluctant. CT scans, which are typically billed at $500 to $1,500, have never been proved in large medical studies to be better than older or cheaper tests. And they expose patients to large doses of radiation, equivalent to at least several hundred X-rays, creating a small but real cancer risk...

And yet, more than 1,000 other cardiologists and hospitals have installed CT scanners like the one Dr. Rosenblatt turned down. Many are promoting heart scans to patients with radio, Internet and newspaper ads. Time magazine and Oprah Winfrey have also extolled the scans, which were given to more than 150,000 people in this country last year at a cost exceeding $100 million. Their use is expected to soar through the next decade. But there is scant evidence that the scans benefit most patients...

No one knows exactly how much money is spent on unnecessary care. But a Rand Corporation study estimated that one-third or more of the care that patients in this country receive could be of little value. If that is so, hundreds of billions of dollars each year are being wasted on superfluous treatments."

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Why yes. The Pope IS Catholic. n/t

[midnight]

2. very good response....

The pharma industry has influenced the way doctors practice medicine.

[TZ]

3. Of course. All health care workers and scientists are money grubbing shills

And CT scans, which ARE useful are just a big plot to poison us all.
Par for the course with DU based bigotry.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Botulinum Toxin And Plutonium Are Useful

If used correctly, no?

Otherwise, the opposite of useful.

[chicagomd]

5. Alternative revenue streams.

Over the past decade the cost of doing business as a physician has gone up and the insurance payment rates have stagnated or gone down.

Physicians in this country are also businessmen and women. If they cannot make what they want in their regular practice they are going to do the good old capitalist thing and find other sources of income.