What are malpractice premiums in the country you come from? Hopw much does the doctor pay to medical school?

Finally, if 100 is too much, you are free to return to your country, or ask the local witch doctor for advice.

Clearly, the doctor’s advice was not wotrh the price, so you should look elsewhere.

The reality is end-of-life care is a major revenue generator for doctors and hospitals; I read somewhere that the majority of medical expenses most people accrue in their lives occur at the end-of-life, an average of like $200,000 per person. Somehow, I don’t think a second opinion costs anywhere near that much, nor do I see why you’d begrudge a person who’s been told he’s going to die a second opinion, unless of course you think doctors are infallible and are never wrong about these things, and patients should juts shut up and accept their fate.

Doctors and hospitals certainly have a cash incentive for persuading people who are probably going to die anyway to pursue useless therapies, and I can say that when my friend recently died of lung cancer, they were telling us she was not going to make it three weeks before she died, but still doing chemo and radiation until 3 days before she died.

In my mother’s case, we were told by her doctor she was “brain dead” after suffering a stroke, and her doctor was adamant about letting her go. But the doctors at the hospital got my father in a room and convinced him there was still a chance, and convinced him to let them put her on life support. What they didn’t tell him was that once you do that in Texas, she can’t be legally taken off. She died 3 weeks later, after causing us the most horrendous emotional pain and stress I have ever known, and then we got the bill: $240,000 for three weeks of care. My father contacted his lawyer, who told him that this hospital had a history of doing this kind of thing, and suddenly the bill was reduced to $21,123 or thereabouts but no zeros, still a hefty amount. Their explanation? “Typographical error.” If the bill was for $24,000 and they added an extra zero by accident, I might see it, but how do you get 4 zeros out of a number that has none?

Let’s not mention the unnecessary surgeries, or medical fraud that costs upward of $170 billion a year by one estimate. No, it could only be the astronomical costs of getting second opinions that is making health care so expensive.

Like someone else here said, do you guys ever take responsibility for anything?

“why do they put nails in coffins? to prevent the oncologist from giving another round of chemo!” ha ha.

However, there are physicians who would have someone undergo surgery for the money.

http://www.kait8.com/Global/story.asp?S=5539574&nav=0jsh

The evidence didn’t go as St. Edwards thought it would.

Hate to disagree, but you list yourself as a “physician executive”. To doctors, that is the opposite of a primary care doctor. I’m not sure you can commisserate with us at the same time you are screwing us.

anon