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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: re3 who wrote (110457)	1/8/2008 7:54:27 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

goldrush, You are missing the point of my case. There are profiles and probabilities associated with almost all health issues. With "limited resources", it makes more sense to first test people with the symptoms and profile most often associated with whatever disease or health issue we are talking about. In an "idealistic" world of unlimited resources, we could test everyone for practically everything and find a lot of extra people with treatable conditions much sooner. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. We can't afford it. In my case, it was ME that suggested to my GP that I be tested for sleep apnea because I was a snorer and woke myself up a few times when I snorted for air. He was against it because my health profile and every other symptom I had suggested that was not the problem. In his eyes it was stress related. He was making a responsible value judgement that said spending 3K on me was not as good a value as spending 3K on one of his other patients (people that were very overweight, often falling asleep at work, heavy snorers, people that had high blood pressure, etc...). Had my sleep issues continued for awhile and it became clear stress was not the issue, then perhaps he would have suggested a sleep test because it would have made some sense. But to me, since I wasn't paying for it and I wasn't sleeping, it made perfect sense to have that test done immediately. Why not? So I found a sleep specialist that sent me right away. If it was 3k out of my pocket, I think I would have gone along with the GP and waited awhile longer (and ultimately learned it was stress and not spent the 3K at all). This is a single story about a single health issue, but many people AND DOCTORS think about these kinds of things in terms of an insurance company paying because other than cost it is logical to err on the side of caution for both the patient and the doctor. People don't quite make the connection (some do) that the insurance companies couldn't really care less if people and doctors behave that way. The insurance companies just pass on the costs in the form of higher premiums. Then people complain they can't afford the insurance.