The complexities of the health care market are challenging to understand and navigate, which allows much of the general population to be misled and routinely overcharged for their medical costs, as clearly outlined in the article Many Hospitals Charge Double or Even Triple What Medicare Would Pay . In Indiana, a local hospital system, Parkview…
A straw man argument is defined as “an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.”As such, the dishonesty under the guise of promoting a profession needs to stop. My former profession has resorted to the straw man fallacy in arguing for full practice authority (FPA).…
When a doctor treats a patient, the patient’s conditions and treatments are then communicated to insurers using the language of the Current Procedural Technology (CPT) coding system, the first edition of which was produced in 1966 by the American Medical Association (AMA). The federal government eventually granted copyright royalties for the CPT system to the…
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Recently I was scrolling through the AOA Morning Brief email when the headline, “THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS ARE CROSSING THE BORDER INTO MEXICO EVERY YEAR TO GET AFFORDABLE MEDICAL TREATMENT” from Newsweek caught my eye. I was first introduced to “Medical Tourism” as part of a medical missions trip to the Philippines in 2004. A few…
Drug prices are insane. Drug Copays are going up fast. Increasingly, drug coverage insurance is pushing more drug costs onto the patients. This quickly becomes a problem. The result: Even when patients have health insurance, huge copays may place necessary drugs out of reach. Pharmaceutical companies will respond in several ways to this criticism: Copay…
“If You Are Working On Something That You Really Care About, You Don’t Have To Be Pushed. The Vision Pulls You.” Steve Jobs Tweet
Put aside your personal beliefs regarding gun ownership and the Second Amendment for a moment: In the last decade, guns killed more than 14,000 American children. A startling number of those deaths — more than a third — were classified as suicides and around 6 percent as accidents. Many more children were injured. I live in Texas. I…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the physician shortage is a physician problem to solve; but it literally will take an act of Congress to change. Bottom line up front (BLUF): the key to physician shortage is increasing the cap on residency slots and Medicare funding for such positions. This article references…
It has become so easy to blame physicians for all the wrongs that are occurring in health care. And it is unfair. So let me clarify some things. Medical school and residency taught us how to care for the human body and all of its requisite ills. It did not prepare us for the onslaught…