It's nice to know that, even though I have only about five seconds a day to devote to thinking about the Issues of the Day, I may still have some slight grasp of what is going on, and what needs to be fixed.
Found this article on the New York Times Today:
In Health Reform, A Cancer Offers an Acid Test
It talks about how the treatment for prostate cancer can be used as an example of why our medical costs are out of control. Pretty much concurs with what I wrote in my previous post about our medical community needing to have the latest widget, no matter how expensive or effective.
This is the first article I've seen that even mentions dealing with the root problem of runaway medical costs, rather than just trying to figure out who's going to pay. Perhaps we can start believing that, though the wheels of change may be grinding s-l-o-w-l-y, they are turning....
1 comment:
One of my favorites is from one of Dr. Dean Ornish's books. Insurance companies circa mid-nineties would fork over twenty five to thirty thousand bucks for by pass surgery with little question but jib at paying for extra office visit time so the doctor could offer nutritian counseling that might keep the patient out of the operating room in the first place.
Let's see. I seem to remember that the doctor quoted an office visit price of less than three hundred bucks but, let's use three hundred just to keep the math simple. At that rate you might keep as many as one hundred patients OUT of the operating room.
Or you can spend THREE MILLION bucks to slice and dice. And if the patients go back to their old ways, they may be back in a few years. ????????????????
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