"they expose patients to large doses of radiation, equivalent to at least several hundred X-rays, creating a small but real cancer risk.... his clinic would feel pressure to give scans to people who might not need them in order to pay for the equipment"
That's one reason among many why I never, ever go to the doctor unless it is unavoidable.
"Doctors weigh costs of taking a look inside the heart; Critics say scans are overused" by Alex Berenson and Reed Abelson, New York Times News Service | June 29, 2008
NEW YORK - The scanner would give Rosenblatt a new way to look inside patients' arteries, enable his clinic to market itself as having the latest medical technology, and provide extra revenue.
Although tempted, Rosenblatt was reluctant. CT scans, which are typically billed at $500 to $1,500, have never been proven in large medical studies to be better than older or cheaper tests. And they expose patients to large doses of radiation, equivalent to at least several hundred X-rays, creating a small but real cancer risk.
Rosenblatt worried that he and other doctors in his clinic would feel pressure to give scans to people who might not need them in order to pay for the equipment, which uses a series of X-rays to produce a composite picture of a beating heart.
More than 1,000 other cardiologists and hospitals have installed CT scanners like the one Rosenblatt turned down. Many are promoting heart scans to patients with radio, Internet, and newspaper ads.
Yeah, COME ON DOWN and let us GIVE YOU CANCER with an UNNECESSARY TEST!
Increasing use of the scans, formally known as CT angiograms, is part of a much larger trend in American medicine. A faith in innovation, often driven by financial incentives, encourages American doctors and hospitals to adopt new technologies even without proof that they work better than older techniques.
What an effin' RACKET! And WHAT WASTE!!!
You read about this stuff, and it is FORGET about National Health Care!
If they can't do it like Britain or Canada, forget it!
Patient advocacy groups and some doctors are clamoring for such evidence. But the story of the CT angiogram is a sobering reminder of the forces that overwhelm such efforts, making it very difficult to rein in a new technology long enough to determine whether its benefits are worth its costs.
Sounds like the MILITARY, doesn't it?
Some medical experts say the American devotion to the newest, most expensive technology is an important reason that the United States spends much more on healthcare than other industrialized nations - more than $2.2 trillion in 2007, an estimated $7,500 a person, about twice the average in other countries - without providing better care.
Oh, ya think?
Pfffffttt!
No one knows exactly how much money is spent on unnecessary care. But a Rand Corp. study estimated that one-third or more of the care that patients in this country receive could be of little value. If that is so, hundreds of billions of dollars each year are being wasted on superfluous treatments.
Rand says, huh?
So they want us to cut back on health care, too, huh?
Which likely means GO WITHOUT -- so richers can nave even more, no?
At a time when Americans are being forced to pay a growing share of their medical bills and when access to medical care has become a major political issue for states, Congress, and the presidential candidates, healthcare specialists say it will be far harder to hold down premiums and expand insurance coverage unless money is spent more wisely.
Would that they felt that way about all the WAR PROFITEERING, 'eh?
Sometimes, the new technologies prove harmful. Physicians were stunned, for example, when clinical trials showed last year that expensive anemia medicines might hasten death in kidney and cancer patients. Such drugs are used more widely in the United States than elsewhere.
Yeah, but GIVE IT TO THEM anyway!
Wees got $$$$ to make!!!!
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