Feeling Special?

If your doctor doesn't make you feel special, fire them and hire a new one. If you need a referral, I would be happy to help connect you to the specialist you need. I know many fine Greater Los Angeles physicians. http://blog.empowereddoctor.net/2012/05/making-patients-feel-special

WC Presentation at 50k Per With Sound

Patients' manifesto: Feeling Special?

Do you feel special when you go to the doctor? If not, fire your doctor and hire a new one. Your doctor should make you feel special. You are seeking medical "attention". The fact that you are the focus of the interaction between you and the doctor by definition means you should feel special.

Does it matter? Yes! The kindness of one person to another carries great strength and impact on both individuals. To argue this isn't true would be to argue against all the major religions and all enlightened philosophies.

Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression and Workers' Compensation

Why we should repeal ‘ObamaCare’

No, I'm not one of the conservatives who is currently harping that ObamaCare should be repealed because it goes too far. The thing that galls me is that the Democrats are the ones that sold us out by creating ObamaCare; under the guise of taking care of ‘the people’ they gave a giant gift to the insurance corporations. It doesn’t seem any different to me than the Bush Administration’s Medicare Drug policy that really was a gift to Big Pharma. Sure, let’s pay for drugs for seniors, but without any cost containment built in—that’s what they did and requiring everybody to buy health insurance is the same.

It’s looking like the courts could very well overturn ObamaCare. Why? Because the consensus seems to be that there is no precedent for the Government to force a citizen to buy a product from a company. Some people claim that auto insurance is an example of that, but it isn’t. The difference is that no one is forced to drive and if they choose to exercise that privilege they have to be insured. You don’t want to buy car insurance? Great, then don’t drive. In health arena you can’t choose to skip the circumstances that might necessitate your need for healthcare and consequently you need coverage as no one, other than folks like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are financially capable of self insuring.

But if everyone needs coverage, should the government be forcing people to buy it? NO!!! The government should be providing it.

“Oh no! Not that! Not government healthcare!!” Well, yes, that’s how it should be. The idea of forcing people to buy a product from a corporation that is dedicated to its own ends (growth and profit) leaves the consumer at their mercy. The insured can be preyed upon, and as we have seen, premiums can go up logarithmically (mine have doubled about every four years), consuming a larger and larger portion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the last 30 years the cost of healthcare has gone up from 7% to 21% of the GDP; that’s a 300% increase!

“But what about the tax burden that would create?” Funny you should mention that. I finally figured out that every dollar ‘taken’ out of my pocket, whether a tax or an insurance payment, is another dollar I don’t have to spend on something I really want or desire. So you can take another $15,000 a year out of my pocket in taxes to pay for ‘Medicare for All’ and I would be at a break even point.

The employed that receive their insurance through work and don’t feel like they really pay for it are wrong. Employers have to look at the cost for an employee. The more they spend on insurance for the employee the less they can pay in other forms of compensation. Salaries could go up at no additional cost to employers if they weren’t burdened by paying for employee insurance.

Sure, I know we are in the midst of an economic crisis. We have to cut expenses, not add new ones. But the economic crisis has to be treated in a holistic fashion. The problem isn’t the cost of healthcare; it’s that we spend so much on being the military bully of the world. 44% of the federal budget goes to defense; it is the biggest entitlement program in not only our federal budget, but in the entire world.

Our military budget comprises 46% of the entire world’s military budget. The next ten nations after us only comprise 26% of the total, and most of those countries are our allies. The boogey man that the military has us believing in to the point that we need hundreds of military bases all over the world is just a scare tactic. The greater likelihood is that our being in every other nation’s face causes most of our problems. If we didn’t antagonize the world to the degree we do, we would likely not need nearly the same levels of defense.

While I’m on this rant, the Republican chant to eliminate Medicare and give seniors a voucher to buy private insurance amounts to the same thing—a gift to insurance companies. No matter how big the voucher is, the price of insurance will continue to skyrocket and become unaffordable to a large segment of the senior population.

Let's get our priorities straight and value our most precious natural resource: our citizens.

Friends, Romans, Blue Shield, lend me your ears

Does anyone know a health insurance executive of integrity who is a person of conscience? I need to get their ear.

Today a patient of mine was denied insurance benefits, by United Health Care, for Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression (NSSD). The request was denied because of "a lack of high quality peer reviewed studies published in leading medical journals to support its use."

This did not come as a surprise. While NSSD has over 15 years of anecdotal data to support its safety and effectiveness, this is the standard of what I hear time and time again. When I spoke to the peer review doctor, Dr. Ayers, she told me that she had no authority to override the guidelines. I asked her if epidurals and surgery would be provided for a patient with this diagnosis and she said, "yes". I asked her is she was aware that neither of those options had the supportive literature for safety or effectiveness and she said, "yes". So when I asked her if this looked like a case of "the pot calling the kettle black", she agreed.

No person of conscience would allow people to be forced into a more dangerous, more expensive and less effective medical procedure. Only a corporation operating under the mandate that profits are the only thing that matters would behave that way.

Is it that the insurance companies want the cost of health care to go up?-- Would you rather have a percentage of a 500 million dollar a year industry or one trillion dollar a year industry? Or, is it that they want to scare people away from any treatment by only offering the most egregious option. I don't know, I do know that they constructively make it impossible to get an ear to listen to reason.

“Your Prescription will be $93,000, sir. Would you like me to put it in a bag for you?”

Pharmaceutical companies have a new strategy; the development of drugs that will cost in the $100,000 per patient range. And the best news for the Dendreon Corporation, the manufacturer of Provenge, is that Medicare has agreed to pay $93,000 per patient for it with your tax dollars! That’s right. This is a treatment for TERMINAL prostate cancer patients that will extend their life by four months, as compared with two months for the previously existing drug.

Sales people have long known that it is easier to sell one person something for $1,000,000 that one hundred people something for $10,000. The pharmaceutical industry has taken that to heart and is concentrating on medications in the $100,000 range.

Dendreon Corporation claims that the reason for the high cost is that they put $1 Billion into research and development. Oh really? Who says? Their accountants? Does anyone really trust accounting these days? Accounting has become a creative pursuit like painting and music composition. Should we be sending in forensic accountants to check out the R and D cost claims before agreeing to pay $93,000 per patient?

And, unfortunately this medical treatment doesn’t do anything to positively impact our nation’s overall health; it just allows someone to live a couple extra months at an unbelievably high cost that will be paid by tax payers. Now that’s an entitlement program! The patient gets a couple extra months to live and the pharmaceutical company makes $100K per patient. Who is really winning here?

That same $100,000 could fund a fitness program for hundreds of children to prevent obesity and resulting health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Or, nutrition programs for children, in our own country, who are malnourished. These are everyday health issues that would provide us greater bang for our buck.

This is the same dilemma that we face in so many areas. When the basic needs of our nation like medicine, fuel, insurance are for profit industries, then the opportunistic profit seeking corporate culture has a field day. “Maximize profits” is the war cry of the modern corporation. But lost from the contemporary equation are the public’s best interests. Okay, I know this sounds a little socialist. So what’s wrong with that? When people are having the money sucked out of their pockets, it doesn’t matter whether it’s tax dollars or corporate greed, they become poorer as a result.

The fact is that the modern corporation has nothing to do with the founding principles of our nation. The founding fathers had been abused by the British corporations in colonial America. As a result they created corporations with limited powers, temporary charters, and public benefit as the main mandate. They even held corporate leaders legally responsible for corporate misdeeds. This is all very different than what corporations morphed into through court interpretations of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was suppose to give rights to the freed slaves.

Perhaps we should have a serious look at nationalizing some of these industries. I, for one, would like to start with the Health Insurance Industry. Big Oil would be nice, too. But let’s not forget to take a look at Big Pharma. Perhaps they could be directed to intervene where the greatest public good would be served instead of where the largest and quickest profits could be made.

“The government is incapable of administrating such things”, you say? Well I remember when the government (NASA) put a man on the Moon. Don’t tell me the government is incapable. At least you can vote politicians out of office. Try to vote out the CEO of Aetna or Bristol Myers Squibb.

Keep reading between the lines.