Using a blog to take on Aetna

Some people feel compelled to share (inflict) their pain on the rest of the world. The battle was about physical therapy. PT is not rocket science and largely involves hours of one on one contact between the patient and provider. Once the PT regimen is determined then the parents should take up the slack here. The kid’s life is short and this is how they can spend some quantity of quality time while they can.

That they managed to subject this kid to a terribly invasive and unpleasant therapy (bone marrow transplant) and have the insurer pay says a lot about how free Aetna was with big bucks for no expected sustained benefit.

Most people lose all economic discretion when considering the price of healthcare. So you might be able to prolong a child’s life for a year, maybe 2 for 1,000,000 dollars. Done, Aetna foots the bill. What if there were a lifesaving treatment that could cure this child for a billion dollars or a trillion dollars? If there were I am willing to bet many parents would demand it if there child were at risk, yet this would make no economic sense.

This is the same financial indiscretion wielded by juries in injury verdicts. Overlawyered.com ran a story about a jury in Mississippi that awarded $50 billion dollars to a plaintiff for a medical injury because they couldnt figure out how many zeros were in a million.

I don’t know guys. Go home and take a look at your own children. Would they be worth a million bucks to save their life? Or would you have to look and then admit….”If only I hadn’t ordered all those thousands and thousands of unnecessary tests all these years, I wouldn’t have driven the ins. companies out of business.” The ins. companies would then have money to save my child.”

I have never seen so many arrogant people in my whole life. How can you just take about letting children die or even killing them just because YOU think it is best? Its even made worse by the fact that you are physicians. I’m sure many low lifes sitting in prisons have more morals and values than what some of you have..You guys really are the exact definition of two-faced. I will NEVER trust another physician again! Thank you!

Anon 6:58,

First off, I have been making several of the comments in this thread against massive spending for this child and I am not a doctor and do not work in healthcare. I am an economist, so your anger at physicians might be misdirected. You can hate economists all you want.

Secondly, I am not saying this child’s life is not worth a million dollars. You act like there is an unlimited supply of healthcare, medicine, operating rooms, and doctors. The truth is there are finite quantities of all these. I am saying that the use of these precious resources would be better spent saving the lives of 500 people that need treatment of curable diseases. You want to talk about morals? How would you explain your decision to all the children who fall through the safety nets of Medicare because of lack of funding due to million dollar treatments you so adamantly support that are essentially usuless at curing the underlying disease? Are you saying that the life of one sick child should get priority over the other sick children just because you feel sorrier for him? Luckily people like you aren’t in charge of the distribution of healthcare because you would quickly waste all available resources to the fist person who had a sad story at the expense of everyone else. Your heart is in the right place but you are too stupid to understand the idiocy of what you are saying.

Dear anon 10:16

Thank you.

b

The question was: Go home and look at your own children and then tell us if their life is worth a million dollars to save? you’ve done your abusive bit at someone who is obviously more caring than any of you, but not one of you have answered their question.

Maybe your child could have cancer and need a million dollars to save him. The health professionals (you know the ones that are in business to save lives) can tell you “sorry no can do, we might need money to pay for some appendectomies.”

So what if someone thinks you’re arrogant? I tend to agree.

Healthcare in this country will not improve until you change teh way you practice. You blame your pateints and their families for bankrupting ins., when you know it is you who are quilty of it. How many MIRs, ct scans, or whatever does it take before enough money has been spent that would have covered an appendectomy? Instead of changing your work habits you would rather withhold treatment from children and call it “For the good of healthcare.”

The only advantage of being a physician these days is that we can do the best for our families…they don’t have to get the same shoddy treatment the rest of you get…