deborah terreson

----------

I did get sick.


Fraid not in the case of someone like myself, who is self employed and would
be buying at a single rate. As I mentioned, the cost would be roughly 500
dollars a month, or 6 grand a year. The bill came to less than one years'
policy purchase price. It would have been significantly lower had the doctor
NOT ordered the unnecessary tests. She did this to cover from any
malpractice liability, when there were more affordable alternatives she could have taken.


There is a similar thing here, mind you, and the local anaesthesiologists
charge roughly 500 dollars an hour for their services. If you pay cash, you
can get it lowered to 400 or so. Not bad for a professional poisoner, who
can kill with the slightest inattention to the customer's vital signs.

Where the financial sodomy comes in is in the prices gouged by the hospitals
for materials. 20 dollars for a Tylenol. 17 dollars for a kotex, 27.50 for a
suture and 237 dollars for an HCG pregnancy test when the online hospital
warehouse price is less than three dollars a test.

http://www.grogans.com/servlet/shop?cat4=142&cmd=H

Take a peek, it lists several different kits available.

And to think that my cusomers get cranky when I add a few bucks onto the
price of a gallon of paint!

In many cases, they are also NOT the result of negligence on anyone's part.
Life is not all sweetness and daffodils. Some people have the luck of the
draw and others get a shitty hand dealt them. Do I hold the doctor
responsible for not stopping my father-in-law's lung cancer, or do I accept
that he brought it upon himself with a two pack a day smoking habit? Where
does a *responsible* individual draw the line? With the idea that not taking
the meds proscrobed, or not quitting the bad habit, or not using the safety
belt in the car might yeild a terrible result if one's number comes up. It
doesn't mean that doctors aren't prone to ****ing up however, and yet I am
baffled how a *hospital* will get sued for the actions of a bad doctor.

No, I bitch about the unnecessary tests that are done for no-one's benefit
but the insurance companies. I don't think you understand what I'm on about
here. Perhaps I'm not explaining myself correctly. The insurance companies
don't get money from these tests, the hospitals do them so that they don't
have to pay MORE in liability insurance to the insurance companies. It's how
the hospitals get breaks on what they are charged by the insurance
companies. The insurance companies look at all the situations and run the
possibilities through a statsitical algorithm and do some funky math that
gives them an idea of what to do that meets THEIR best needs to not get
stuck with having to pay out a malpractice claim. They pass this on to the
hospitals and the doctors obligingly follow like the doctor-bots they are.
What the procedure may be, may NOT be best for the individual, or their
financial situation.

Of course when the health insurance provider is also the same company that's
insuring the hospital, there's a real incentive to test. Can't have the
right hand suing the left, because then the customer who was wronged might
get their money back and then some. Oh no, can't have that, not ever...

In a more plainspoke situation, would you accept getting stuck with a brake
replacement bill on your car every time you go in for a tune-up, because the
brakes *might* fail and you could hold the shop responsible? This is what
the insurance companies make the hospitals do and the mechanics just do as they are told..


No, I want doctors to be professional and for *customers* to understand that
doctors are not gods, and that things *can* go wrong and excepting the most
gross negligence on the part of a doctor, this IS the law of business.

Do the words 'Caveat Emptor' mean anything to you?

If you are a cash paying *customer* and do not wish to pay for a procedure,
the doctor is *not* responsible for anything that happens that is bad.

It's when they do not talk to their customers and just go on like medical
automatons without informing said customer of the procedures and costs that
they undermine their own professionalism. Hence a once noble trade and skill
is reduced to a liability-prevention oriented 'industry'.

Robbing? you lost me on this one.

There's no BS here..

I have an 1,100 dollar bill, for a pathology of a polyp taken from my
cervix. Cervical polyps are *extremely* rare to be cancerous and yet I got
fist-****ed on this 'test' because the doctor was unwilling to talk to me
and tell me she was going to have it done. It is NOT required by law. It is
considered 'procedure' for reasons of malpractice liability. When pressed,
she admitted as much. Had I been told of this beforehand, I would have made
it a point to tell her that I would NOT pay for it. She gave me the
insured-medicine scam that is there for insurance purposes only. It would in
no way, and did not in any way, make my cunt heal faster. In speaking with
the pathologist, I discovered that what they were looking for, could be
found with a cheaper test, called an ECC (endo-cervical curettage - a kind
of roto-rooter pap test where they go up inside the mouth of the cervix and
do a good pipe-cleaner type scraping). An ECC is 300 bucks or so. The
standard pathology was 862 dollars *plus* the cost of the pathologist. The
ECC is done at a lab outside the hospital, while the other is done in-house,
at a premium. They have to cover their asses, as their malpractice insurance
requires of them. How convenient that it is also quite profitable to do so.
When I called the hospital biling department out on the carpet for this, and
demanded the contact information to the CEO, so I could ask him what kind of
Mickey Mouse operation he was running, they sent me a check for over 500
dollars back! Unbelievable, especially as I didn't expect a red cent back,
nor did I even bother to ask!

If you are interested, take a look at the 'Bethesda' protocols regarding the
test known as an AGUS. Look it up. A colposcopy and an ECC are recommended
in cases where a pap yields an AGUS. Not because of increased morbidity, or
increased mortality but increased *malpractice*.

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/hpcd/ccs/mbcccp/cprimer.pdf

Here's the .pdf file.. note that what you are looking for is on page 9 in
the Atypical Glandular Cells of Undetermined Significance section.

Oh, and BTW, I got an AGUS on the pap test that the doctor rushed and took
three weeks after my surgery. She was supposed to wait at least 6 months
before taking the test, to avoid *exactly* the false-positive I got. Before
I even knew what was up, they had me set up in appointment for a follow-up
colposcopy and ECC. Luckily, I holmesed out the skinny and put my foot down.
The doctor admitted to rushing the test in this case, and it took me
pointing out her overall lack of professionalism for her to admit she had
been following malpractice procedure and NOT using her own professional
skills. Needless to say, when the pap test was done again, at a different
doctor's, at the proper time after I'd healed, it came out fine.

And of course, I am on the hunt now for a professional *physician* and not
some schmuck doctor.

Deb.