Posted on 10/10/2012 10:39:06 AM PDT by Innovative
Heart attack patients in states that require healthcare providers to report the outcomes of procedures to open blocked arteries are less likely to receive those life-saving treatments than similar patients in states without public reporting mandates, according to a new study.
... the study, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., shows that public reporting does not automatically lead to better outcomes - and potentially can backfire.
In 2010, the most recent year in the analysis, 38% of patients in the three states that require public reporting .. received an artery-opening procedure. That compared with 43% of patients in seven states without the requirement
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Vote as if your life depended on it, because it does...
Sounds like those decisions are already being made, the public disclosure just brought it to light.
“This GNS moment brought to you by ...
Obamacare...when you wanna get screwed without the lube, use Obamacare”.
[spit]
We better win and repeal this mess....
On the other hand, CMS, several insurance companies, and individual patients are suing hospitals, cardiologists and device makers over unnecessary cardiac procedures, mostly stent placements. Your heart skips a beat - you get a stent regardless of medical necessity, at about $50K payment per procedure. Perhaps the public disclosure is part of the campaign to slow down unnecessary procedures that cost all of us dollars through either higher insurance premiums or taxes. Then again, the death panels do need base line stats from which to make a decision.
38% of patients in the three states that require public reporting .. received an artery-opening procedure. That compared with 43% of patients in seven states without the requirement
Sounds to me like its not insurance companies...sounds more like its bureaucrats somewhere who do not want to be second guessed because someone will raise hell....
[But you are right, we HAVE made great strides we cannot afford. We can keep people alive for a long time and can prolong their suffering for ages. I’ve agonized with too many dear ones too sick to have quality lives , bedridden but kept alive, not quite ready to go. Don’t want that to be me. My personal solution? Give me my blue pill and I’ll leave a note telling you where you can find me...]
It’s cherry pickin’ time. A guy with a .500 BA and 10 AB is not better than a .328 hitter with 500 AB. Eventually, the most experienced doctors near retirement will get sick and tired of the whole thing and give up. Medicare patients are screwed if 0-care survives.
It’s cherry pickin’ time. A guy with a .500 BA and 10 AB is not better than a .328 hitter with 500 AB. Eventually, the most experienced doctors near retirement will get sick and tired of the whole thing and give up. Medicare patients are screwed if 0-care survives.
My dad has two cardiologists (the plumber - puts in stents, the electrician - deals with pacemaker) and both have told us they are ‘gone’ when Obamacare kicks in. Both are fairly ‘young’, late 50’s for one, early 60’s on the other. Both are excellent, caring, experienced docs. They want to help their patients, not be bogged down in approvals, paperwork, denied care, etc.
Governor Sarah Palin right again.
May I suggest the book "Economics in One Lesson", by Harry Hazlitt. The book explains that you always have to look at where the money would have gone if you don't do something you intend, or more usually, something the government intends to do.
Since money in general is limited, you have to figure out what other medical test or procedure must now be limited in order to provide enough mammograms to limit the missed cancers to whatever small number you want.
Medical spending via the government is already highly political, and your idea would just make it much worse. More money is spent on mammograms than on prostate cancer, yet breast cancer hits 1 in 8 women, while prostate cancer hits 1 in 6 men. As long as we don't have an infinite supply of money, some way to decide where to spend it is needed, and cost per life saved seems reasonable, even though it sucks when you are the one who comes up short.
I've been fighting sarcoidosis for almost 40 years now, and it sucks, there's no way to know it's coming, and little to no research spent on it. I've got little empathy for those who want more and more of my money to make sure that they never have anything bad happen to them. If you are more paranoid than your insurance company or Medicare, then pay more for your own tests. Bad things happen, many many bad things are possible. If you spend every penny you have on medical tests to avoid the ones you know about, something else will bite you and you won't have the money to cope. So suck it up and learn to balance the risks like an adult.
Sorry if this sounds grumpy, but today grumpy seems to go well with cynical.
That’s ok. Everybody has a right to be grumpy sometime.
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