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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (41582)	3/30/2017 1:29:00 AM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

I think the main wasted expense by Medicare and others is the additional procedures that are done that need not have been. Tort reform, nationwide, would solve some of this -- but it may take decades to do it because doctors come out of Med School with access to tons of fancy, expensive equipment. Just as I prefer to work with the newest, fastest, most exciting stuff -- they do, too. I'm sure you do, too. But reality is that isn't always warranted. Usually isn't. I may have told this but my wife a few months had her physical and had a slight anomaly on her EKG. She got the referral to the cardiologist for a nuclear stress test, which is probably the ordinary thing. So, they do it and the doctor comes in and says, "it is totally normal." We go, "Great. We're glad to get that news." He says, "I think I'd like to have you back for a an angiogram, just to be sure there is no blockage or anything." Huh? I thought you said it was all good. No chest pain, nothing. But if the cardiologist says, "Do this," most of the time people are going to do this. Medicare will deal with it. The angiogram was fine. The doctor actually told me, "Your wife is NOT going to die of heart disease. I can tell you that much." I thought that was a damned bold statement for anyone to make. But the point is that was a lot of dough and I'm still not sure why he thought she needed to have that [expensive] procedure. You know what I'm getting at here. The second, related point, is that if he didn't do it protect himself from liability, did he do it to beef up profits of the hospital and for his cardio practice? (Could be, of course, it was medically necessary. For some reason, I wonder. It might have been, to someone who understands that stuff.)