Problems In Our Medical Care

To the Editor:
Last week, Publisher Art Hall repeated decades old complaints from the medical profession. Using an article from the Wall Street Journal, Hall recast the old complaints about insurance company interference in doctor’s decisions, to government interference in medicine, specifically Medicare and Medicaid. He then went on to bemoan inefficient and ineffective government involvement in our nation’s health care. Need I point out that there are approximately, 650,000 doctors and surgeons in the U.S., so it isn’t surprising that two of them have complaints!
Interestingly enough, the two “authorities” he quoted used exactly the same arguments that three local doctors used with me when they refused to treat me because of their conflicts with my insurance company during the last 15 years. Somehow, that has morphed into government interference now.
Personally, I would rather base any policy decisions or criticisms of the medical industry on the conclusions of the Institute of Medicine, a Who’s Who in health care. They have concluded that the medical profession wastes $700-800 billion dollars a year on unnecessary procedures, and treatments, medications, redundant testing etc. That’s around 1/3 of all the money we spend on medical care. Wasted. That to me is a real problem. I, unlike Mr. Hall, think that there is plenty of blame to spread around to all parties: public, private, and personal.
Which of course raises the most important point. If we are to make intelligent policies, we have to contrast the cases where the government or insurance are wrong against the cases where the doctors are wrong and simply don’t like any questioning of their judgment. So let me provide just a few with which I have personal experience.
A couple of years ago, I found myself short of breath at 10 p.m. I called our nurse daughter who is familiar with my condition. She told me to go to the emergency room to get an albuterol inhaler and probably would need nothing else. I went in under my own powers, and told them what my daughter said. They immediately put me in a wheelchair, ushered me into the room, placed me in bed, gave me inhalants, an EEG, took more blood tests than I had ever known existed, and kept me there for five hours. All of which were over my wife’s and my own objections and which ultimately ended in their releasing me with a prescription for a $50 albuterol inhaler.
And they charged Medicare $3,800.
A couple of years ago, I was biopsied for skin cancer and the result was carcinoma. The dermatologist recommended a MOHs treatment, which costs $1,500. I had to ask the probability that it might turn into melanoma. She said, “low.” When I asked how low, not wanting to saddle Medicare with a $1,500 bill unless it was in the 5-10 percent range, she got angry, accused me of being a socialist and stormed out of the office leaving me with mouth gaping.
These are just a few that I could mention, but I’m not going to commit Mr. Hall’s fallacy and suggest that this is typical. Rather, the point is that we have to look at both sides of the issue, and that’s why rather than just listening to those who list the system’s shortfalls, I would rather go by the broad and include study of the Institute of Medicine.
It’s not an issue of Obamacare. It’s an issue of waste in the system with a lot of parties doing the wasting.