Saturday, September 30, 2006
Defensive medicine in action
Occurring daily at an ER near you. The main reason why health care costs are skyrocketing.
Posted by Kevin |
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Comments:
Defensive medicine is not the MAIN reason medical costs are rising, just one contributor. The reason medical costs are rising has to do with increased demand for services by our aging, growing population and the ability to treat more maladies with expensive new interventions. This all costs money.
Here is another reason.
88 y/o grandma comes to the ICU from the ER. She has pneumonia and an UTI. Both her troponin and creatinine are 2.5. She has had a fall and has a large subdural. She is going to die no matter what. With compassionate comfort care and preserving dignity she would peacefully expire within a day.
But wait!!! The family, including cousin Vinny, who hasn't seen her in 10 years wants "everything done to try and save her". So she get poked, prodded, needled, pressors, intubated, lines shoved everywhere. At a minimum she gets consultations from neurology, neurosurgery, cardiology, pulmonary, nephrology.
200k and 2 weeks later she dies of course.
88 y/o grandma comes to the ICU from the ER. She has pneumonia and an UTI. Both her troponin and creatinine are 2.5. She has had a fall and has a large subdural. She is going to die no matter what. With compassionate comfort care and preserving dignity she would peacefully expire within a day.
But wait!!! The family, including cousin Vinny, who hasn't seen her in 10 years wants "everything done to try and save her". So she get poked, prodded, needled, pressors, intubated, lines shoved everywhere. At a minimum she gets consultations from neurology, neurosurgery, cardiology, pulmonary, nephrology.
200k and 2 weeks later she dies of course.
How true it is. One solution would be a lifetime cap per beneficiary on Medicare expenditures, much like those of us with private insurance have.
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