I'm not a Dr, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express a few times. When I ruptured my medial retinaculum, the Dr said it was destroyed and would never heal and only get worse. A year and a half later, I had an MRI and it had repaired itself. The Dr is amazed and of course so am I. I think that Govt and Ins is holding us back from advances in medicine and at an increasing rate.
I have to say i agree with that theory. This is why I feel that government and insurance companies should not be involved in healthcare in any way. Personally, i feel that insurance is the largest form of fraud in the world.. A lot of people will disagree with me because they themselves or have friends and relatives (myself included) who are covered under medicare, medicaid, or some form of insurance. The problem is when the govt or an insurance company become involved in patient care they become a middle man.
Its not in the best interest of the middle man in this case for people to live longer lives. We all know that as we get older we go to the doctor more and more often. Cost becomes an issue and I will argue to my grave that cost also effects patient care decisions. With a growing population and increased longevity in the lives of Americans, it becomes an economic decision made by MC,MA, or Private Insurance; not a clinical decision decided by the physican in charge of the patient's care.
Here's an example that we deal with almost daily......
If we take a patient to the OR to perfrom a hip replacement we must base the choice of implants used upon the form of insurance the patient has. The patients are classified by the insurance company or the fed govt as "low demand", "medium demand", and "high demand". If we decide to use premium implants in a low demand patient, the insurance company will not reimburse the cost. We have to eat it as a group..
So we're forced to make a clinical decision based upon someone else's judgement that has little knowledge of what we are trying to accomplish.
Personally, i think all patients should get the 'premium' implants. They last longer and hold up to more force. As a medical professional, i feel its only right that we do anything and everything to give each patient the best possible result.
What i'm getting at is this....Whats more cost effective for Insurance or Govt healthcare??
A) give grandpa 50 injections of IGF and hope his knee gets better so he lives longer and is more mobile (mobility has been proven to lead to longevity of life)
B) give grandpa a low demand knee replacement that lasts 15 yrs, then put him through a revision surgery when he's 85 that he will most likely develop pneumonia from because of his lack of mobility post op
Or how about this question?
Inject Pressers knees with IGF/AGF multiple times a year for the next forty years then end up doing a knee replacement when he's 75 that will most likely last the rest of his life
Or make him deal with it, silence him once or twice a year with inexpensive synvisc, and replace his knees when he's 60 and hope he's too unhealthy for the revision surgery
All of these choices are dictated by the middle man, which is dictated by $$$$$$$$$.
The problem is we are now too deep as a country to reverse this downward spiral.
So I completely agree with you. Advancements in medicine are currently being impeeded and as you said probably at an increasing rate.
