In the 1990s, I could go to my Family Doctor, primary care physician, or general practitioner, and get a diagnosis and treatment for an ailment.
Now, I only go to one to get referrals to specialists.
We need to go back to simplified health care. It shouldn’t take 4 months or longer to see several specialists in order to diagnose & treat.
For example, I had a simple hand injury. 2 urgent cares, 1 hand specialist, one ultrasound specialist, and 3 weeks later it’s a hematoma. I still don’t have a treatment. That won’t happen until the hand specialist is back in the office in another week. This should have been 1 visit instead of 5, and the hematoma drained.
Absolutely right, the CDC 2016 opioid prescribing guidelines done by the anti opioid zealots & opioid elimination industry wrote the 2016-2022 opioid prescribing recommendations. Andrew Kolodny & Roger Chou who have massive conflicts of interests, they all were expert witnesses in the opioid litigations they made 750-1000$ an hour to lie during litigation. There was lawsuits in Oklahoma with a pharmaceutical company, Andrew Kolodny was the expert witness for the prosecution. The judge got upset at Andrew Kolodny for misrepresenting prescription opioids in the opioid crisis. Andrew Kolodny was lying about the data related to prescription drug overdose. He said that prescription opioids caused 20% of the overdose deaths in the country. The judge knew from reading on the cdc website thst only 0.01% of patients who take prescription opioids die from an overdose. That’s a huge difference in the numbers Andrew Kolodny was spewing.
Make sure you’re seeing a real doctor and not a NP or a PA. They have very very short training and often refer out since they don’t know much. They’re very profitable for their employer though At your expense of course (ex: lower salary, refer out to the specialists who work at the same place that employs them, are not bound by stark law, etc)
Follow the money…I agree wholeheartedly that the system is pathetic. My primary care person is not even a doctor, but well trained in redirecting/referring. My most recent referral was placed eight weeks ago and I do not have an appointment yet. When I called, I was told there are 500 referrals ahead of me. There are many pieces to this, including medical insurance, pharmaceutical companies throwing their weight around, and more layers of people to pay. We have essentially arrived at socialized medicine. I too wish we could restore the system that was in place 30+ years ago. But I know that wishing won’t make it so….
I will vote this up if you change the title to disinclude the word “allow.”
What I mean by this is that it is LONG past time that citizens of the United States of America STOP begging for the government to “allow” something.
It IS time to forcibly put the government - state and federal, back where they belong. To elaborate further, our constitution details perfectly well what the government may and may not do, and how it is supposed to operate. WE THE PEOPLE have allowed state and federal government to trample our constitution for over 50 years.
Once all “rules” created by unelected bureaucrats are removed, and unconstitutional bills and mandates are removed, there will be no more asking to be “allowed.”
The more you invest in a thing the more of it you get, generally speaking. California, Oregon and Washington have invested a lot of tax money in homelessness; just look at how much they got.
The problem is that the federal government and to a lesser extent state governments are involved in health care.
In the ‘ 60s, the federal government decided that Medicare was a good idea because it would garner votes for politicians, and it had the dual advantage of pleasing the very powerful health care lobby because it assured funding to providers for drugs and medical care. Pharmacists and medical care providers were no longer burdened with carrying the debt of patients or the distressing event of denying service to those who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay. Look at how that has increased the cost of medical care while simultaneously reducing the availability - and in too many cases the quality - of care.
Here’s another example: government funded college loans. In the ‘60s and into the ‘70s, tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for in-state students were reasonable. It was possible for students to work their way through college without loans or scholarships. I know. I did it. I graduated not owing a single red cent to anyone. It took me a little longer than the 4 years generally alloted, but I got through the curriculum and was awarded a degree while holding down full-time employment. In the last few semesters, I was actually a manager and corporate officer.
Now, since government has funneled billions of dollars at the institutions, tuitions and fees have reached obscene levels and the quality of education has plummeted due to lowered standards due to political pressure to accept less qualified students. Add to that the level of political indoctrination and the degree to which those institutions attack our form of government and our society, and you see the lunacy of government funded higher education. And, there is no demonstated demand for it. Most college graduates these days cannot find employment in their fields of study even years after graduation while we continue to fund post-graduate degrees in disciplines that have no market demand whatsoever.
Bringing the issue back to healthcare and government involvement, look at what has happened to the national health service in Great Britain and Canada. It has become a political boondoggle that fails as often as it succeeds.
The problem is government funding. Healthcare cannot be democratically allocated. Government cannot administer any part of healthcare - even if limited to financing it - without it being democratically allocated.
By how much does administering medical insurance add to the true cost of medical care? There is the measurable overhead of additional people, facilities, etc. but there is also the fact that because they have high assurance of being paid, care providers are insulated against having to care what their services cost.
Your experience has not been my experience. Only after months of useless exams and pills for a gut issue a ND actually tested (non invasive) to find a cause and rule out disease, then set me on plan that actually cured me. I found the ND to be a life-saver. My MD just wanted to pass me around to specialists for a round of invasive tests and load me with pills.
exactly another issue with NPs and PAs. They arguably worsen access to healthcare by clogging up access to specialists for people who actually need it with their low quality referrals. Why see your provider if you’re often just going to be told to see another provider?
I agree. Actually, however, the government is not prohibiting doctors from treating their patients, the system is. The problem is a that the current medical system has been built around third party payers, active encouragement to participate (i.e. disease mongering), and a setup that “spreads the wealth”. I’m not sure we can backtrack from this arrangement.
I can tell you most of the NPs and PAs aka “APPs” (there’s nothing “advanced” about them) aren’t doing it intentionally to line their own pockets they simply lack the training a real doctor has. The have maybe 1/20th the number of hours of training and the quality of that training is very different. However IMO their employers are exploiting their lack of training and medical knowledge by intentionally hiring them knowing they’re going to spam referrals to others specialists within their system because this then generates more profits, all while paying them less money than a doctor. Why hire real doctors when patients can’t tell the difference because they don’t know the standard of care or think they’re seeing a doctor when they’re not. It’s also sketchy APPs do not have to abide by stark law. Only physicians.
Sorry to hear about your troubles. My husband has the opposite issue. He asks for a referral to a nutritionist/dietician for his multiple metabolic issues including type 2 diabetes and gets told can’t refer or know of one, but yet they want him to take medication that is $900-1200 a month that won’t even treat any of the underlying issues.
Physicians need to be trained like veterinarians to treat problems and use nutrition as a treatment and refer only if the case is complicated or outside very specific expertise, like spinal surgery
If you’re older and remember back, Doctors used to be doctors, they took care of you unless you obviously needed a specialist, and 3/4th of the time they had the meds on hand to ‘sell’ that to you for a dollar or two. The problem is compound. AMA came significant in the medical world, Pharma became dominant. AMA acctged somewhat as a dictator/ or maybe like a union, Pharma bought off a lot of Congress and AMA, then ‘they’ all began developing laws and regulations to hobble the doctors in treatment care. Why? There’s a lot of money in Pharma, and they bought off those named above. Doctors no longer could give the “pill” that you needed to cure your sore throat. Pharma got richer, congress got richer, AMA got richer, and family doctors got squeezed. But… to save the day, Medical Specialists came strongly on the scene. They get to charge more… WAY more that regular doctors! So now, your regular doctor makes money by sending patients to a Pharmacy to get a new and “improved” med, then they also send the to a specialists. Boom! The family doctor then really makes his money off of kick-backs from Pharma, and the Specialist. That is what brings them up to something like a living wage.
It’s my opinion that we need to get rid of crooks in congress, in Pharma and in the Professional organizations that all have a hand in forcing the edicts that the Pharma requests. Then, we would have our honest primary care physicians back. Well, one more thing: It wouldn’t be complete until we also got rid of what the Obama administration did to the medical field.
I do agree we need to remove the majority of medical associations, there are a few that still believe in the old Hippocratic Oath and are not the issue. I agree Pharma needs to be neutered in power. Removing their ability to directly advertise to the masses should be first priority. This will reduce Pharma’s power over broadcasting stations, which pharma supplies 50-75% of advertising revenue.
The MAHA organizations and other health related grassroot organizations do endorse candidates for state and federal government that meet their requirements. This can be helpful to primary out the bad actors in Congress otherwise we may get as bad if not worse actors into government positions.
We also need to incentive people to go into primary care. Human medicine may need to go back to being like veterinary medicine with the primary doctor being able to practice immediately after graduating medical school and those that want to specialize to do the residence and other further training. Primary care needs generalists not specialists. Primary care physicians can always refer the harder cases to the specialists.
I do need to make some corrections on your medical history part. The AMA has been around since 1847. By 1906, it already had enough political power to influence the Food and Drug Administration. The Rockefellers also influenced medicine greatly with the 1910 Flexner Report, that recommended higher medical school standards, closure of subpar institutions (non-allopathic and black schools), emphasized the importance of scientific training. These helped the AMA get even more power as their practitioners were the medical professionals that met the criteria, Pharma’s influence did not really start until the 1930-1950 time period with the discovery of manmade chemical medications and their mass production, but it has soared quickly.
Thanks for catching me up on the history of Pharma. I grew up in the military, so it wasn’t until the the late 60’s that I became aquainted with private practice. I noticed the big change when Pharma was finally allowed to advertise. I think that was in the late 70’s or early 80’s. I used to be able to find online how much individual physicians were receiving as stiepend pay from all of the Pharma companies. Some of the reports were pretty impressive. I haven’t been able to find that online lately the last few years. I’m guessing it’s because the majority of physicians have had to sell their practice and go with corporations since Obama did what he did. At any rate, I feel bad for the doctors. What they were dealt is not what they thought they were buying when they entered college.
At your expense of course (ex: lower salary, refer out to the specialists who work at the same place that employs them, are not bound by stark law, etc)