Sprayage states that you are among her favorite new blogs that she frequents often. You have a gift for that exquisite humor that just jumps out in ways one doesn’t expect and you indeed almost got Sprayage with a coffee nasal lavage a couple of times. Is THAT where you got Sprayage from? LOL!

Hope you don’t mind I did this Whitecoat.

A stupid kidney stone wreaked havoc with me and I have had so many tests as a result of it since May, 2004. CTs, KUBs, IVPs, renal scans and multiple procedures. I have had so much radiation that it is just one of those things you give to God. I am surprised that I wasn’t out there glowing with the fireflies this past summer!

I am so grateful to have insurance and that my uro doc participates!

The Mag 3 renal scan with lasix alone is 3,000.00! (Next Wednesday will be my 6th one and BTW #5 showed I was healing and I am even more optimistic about this one)

But what if I didn’t have insurance? I still have balances on co-pays for everything being done. Then there are the bills from the hospitals, specialist docs, radiologists, anesthesiologists and ER docs. I can see how someone could lose their home with something truly catastrophic.

Then you hear that in countries with socialized medicine they have to wait a long time to get these test/procedures. Again, speaking from personal experience…I can’t imagine not being able to tackle the problem in a timely fashion. Socialized medicine is not the Utopia that Michael Moore presents.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could combine the best ideas from socialized medicine and our health care system into a program where everyone is happy?

I wonder which could happen first…the Utopian health care solution or peace in the middle east?

My husband had two when he blew out the muscle on his calf. By the time they read the results and called him to tell him that he needed surgery, his calf had already healed up. His legs are in great shape, so he was able to come back without surgery.

In both cases, we gained nothing by these expensive MRIs. We really learned nothing from them. And since the doctors didn’t really do anything for either condition, we might just as well have been uninsured and not gone in.

No, you may not be pounding down your doctor’s door every month.

BUT…you certainly are not disincentivised to do so to demand to have an MRI of your knee or ankle when you injure it. Does every injury need an MRI? No. Yet I have patients DEMAND (not ask, not recommend, DEMAND) that I order it. Do I have another 20 minutes to spend explaining why not? No. Do I have an incentive to make my patients happy? Yes, it is now called Pay for Performance where patient satisfaction scores make a difference of THOUSANDS of dollars a month to my practice! So it is easier for me to go ahead and order the MRI–no copay for most of my HMO patients. I would be the bad guy to you if I said no, and the bad guy to all the social engineers for ordering “unnecessary tests” when I say yes. A lose/lose situation for us all.

The idea they are placing in their fable or parable is that each individual patient is no longer responsible in understanding the true costs of their care nor the impact of their demands for care which raise the cost for everyone else.

If you had to pay the full cost of the office visit, the full cost of the MRI, you would be afraid to come in; just like the uninsured. You would neglect your health for years just to avoid the possible financial devastation a diagnosis of cancer would bring.

I agree, most people aren’t going to run out the door looking for their next FREE CT, etc., nor are doctors going to schedule them. (Most people DON’T want to go to the doctor OR get tested) Still…when you aren’t worried about where the money is coming from…and it WILL come from somewhere or compromise care.

Quality vs quantity-how DO we get both??

The health care business/medicine is a multi-layered complicated problem and I believe should be a nonpartisan issue that needs to come to the forefront.

People are interested and DO care. I get more hits on a post I did questioning socialized medicine (and the one on kidney stones) then anything else.

Back in June, after watching Michael Moore’s film about health care (Sicko)I did a post on the Pros and Cons of Socialized medicine(actually don’t remember my exact title) because while I knew he would provide a skewed perspective it still got me thinking. So, I put my (lay person’s), opinions, feelings, concerns and questions out there and also linked posts from back then that had been done by Scalpel, Panda Bear and others. The NHS Blog Doc posted it on his site as another view from across the pond. It seems that some of our friends from across the border or the pond are happy with their system while others are not.

Scalpel is doing a great job with his posts on this topic!

“Comparing hats to medicine or to pharmaceuticals may seem even less appropriate than comparing apples to oranges, but the same economic principles apply.”

doesn’t make it so!

I agree with the general economic argument here, all things being equal (although I’m no economist), but the authors completely ignore the social/psychological/cultural differences between hats and healthcare. If I had access to free hats, I’d want a whole bunch of hats! I’d go hat crazy!

But hats are a whole lot easier to want than MRIs. My insurance pays all but $10 of my doctor’s visits, but I’m not knocking down her door every month, just because visits are (practically) free. What kind of idiots these articles (and those making the same argument) take us humans to be.

Think there is an HMO for the Senators or Congressmen/woman? No. Do they live on what Medicare approves or spends for care? No.