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No matter what I go to the damn doctor for I ALWAYS GET BLOODWORK DONE! I don't care if I go into the office for a cold or a scratch. Last time I demanded my doctor run lab work specifically my Vitamin D levels they were critically low!! And guess what? SHE DIDN"T EVEN OFFER ME ANYTHING OR EVEN TELL ME TO STARTS SUPPLEMENTING VITAMIN D!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm an RN and I can tell you from first hand experience that the healthcare system is a complete and utter racket. The people at the top of it are making LOTS OF MONEY! I've been having GERD like symptoms for a year. Went to two ENTs and a GI doc. Everything checked out fine but they wanted me to take months worth of antacid/PPI meds. I kept telling them I don't think it's an acid issue. The meds did nothing so I finally decided to go the other route and take digestive enzymes and betaine HCL. I take it here and there. My reflux has gotten 1000x better.
Anyways, doctors do not take a wholistic approach to health anymore. Medicine is way too compartmentalized nowadays. And the worst part is many of the specialists don't communicate with each other especially at the hospital leve so the right hand never knows what the left hand is doing. As a bedside RN the best advice I can give people if they are sick is to STAY OUT OF THE HOSPITAL! Chance are you will get sicker when you get there. It's a dangerous place for sure. I can't wait to get out of the healthcare profession all together. But in America the sad truth is just about every industry is a racket nowadays. From the top down.
I agree that the healthiest thing a person can do is stay away from doctors and hospitals.
"""I'm an RN and I can tell you from first hand experience that the healthcare system is a complete and utter racket. The people at the top of it are making LOTS OF MONEY""
YES, the execs of health care and health insurance get the best "care" ($$$$).
And Republicans WANT it like that.....they tried to gut Obama's health care reform and now ***** about what's wrong with it...THEY are what's wrong with it. Their adoration and Worship of Wealthy CEOs as their God is what's killing the average American.
I leave work early yesterday because I was feeling awful. I had my wife take me straight to the doctors office. Now when I say doctors office, I mean one of those mega-clinics where there are doctors of different specialties and a ton of ARNP's. You see someone different every time you are there. At least in my area, this is what has replaced the general family doctor. You see someone different every time you are there, usually.
Anyway, I go in, give them my co-pay and take a seat in the massive waiting area. I get called back where they weigh me, sit me in a little room, take my blood pressure and temp and ask why I am there today. In that order. Then an ARNP (nurse practitioner) comes in and asks me why I am there. I give the symptoms and she has me sit up on the table. She listens to my lungs and heart. Checks my ears with the light and then the kicker. She checks in my mouth and tells me to say ahhhh. I comply and she says, "Well your throat looks raw, but you tonsils look fine."
I'm glad my tonsils look good because I haven't had them for 20 years!!! She gives me an Rx for antibiotics and scoots me out the door. From weigh in to finish...6 minutes. What the hell are we running for healthcare? Express lane service? How many serious conditions get missed because they don't actually examine you or listen? I mean, how and the hell can you look at someone's throat and not know they don't have tonsils? Anyway, they will bill my insurance for the standard $125 fee. For 5 minutes of nothing.
Count yourself lucky that you did not come home with staph infection or pneumonia or some other kind of horrible disease that you picked up at the clinic.
You would have been infinitely smarter to have just gone home, crawled into bed and consumed plenty of fluids for the next few days. Antibiotics are useless on viruses, they kill the good flora in your intestinal track (which can also lead to nasty complications) - and you would have been $125 richer.
The over-prescription of antibiotics is also responsible for "super bugs" which are resistant to treatment and can cause serious illness.
Just throw those things away and make yourself a nice cup of tea.
Count yourself lucky that you did not come home with staph infection or pneumonia or some other kind of horrible disease that you picked up at the clinic.
You would have been infinitely smarter to have just gone home, crawled into bed and consumed plenty of fluids for the next few days. Antibiotics are useless on viruses, they kill the good flora in your intestinal track (which can also lead to nasty complications) - and you would have been $125 richer.
The over-prescription of antibiotics is also responsible for "super bugs" which are resistant to treatment and can cause serious illness.
Just throw those things away and make yourself a nice cup of tea.
20yrsinBranson
I was told I have a bacterial infection. And I am feeling better so far using them. No way in hell I am throwing away $58 (and that's after insurance) worth of meds. And again, I paid $20. They will bill my insurance for the $125.
I agree with the over prescribed use of antibiotics, but a cup of tea won't help kill a bacterial infection. And besides, I don't take antibiotics often. Oh and my son got diagnosed with strep throat. He is on antibiotics. Should he have had tea instead?
my daughter got the flu once and I bought her an over the counter medicine on the way home. I read the back of the box and threw it in the garbage and made some chicken noodle soup for her no way I can ruin a kids liver just cause its legal to sell that crap. wigh
The worst thing that ever happened to healthcare in this country was Ted Kennedy and the HMO's which gave way to PPO's. Costs went sky high and care went down.
I was told I have a bacterial infection. And I am feeling better so far using them. No way in hell I am throwing away $58 (and that's after insurance) worth of meds. And again, I paid $20. They will bill my insurance for the $125.
I agree with the over prescribed use of antibiotics, but a cup of tea won't help kill a bacterial infection. And besides, I don't take antibiotics often. Oh and my son got diagnosed with strep throat. He is on antibiotics. Should he have had tea instead?
There is no way that the doctor could know that you have a BACTERIAL infection without taking a specimen to the laboratory and growing a culture. Or, at the very, very, very least, looking at it through a microscope. From the description of your "9 minute" examination, this did not happen.
Ergo, your doctor was simply "guessing" and wrote you a prescription because it was the fastest and easiest fix, whether it was the right medicine for you or not.
Do the math, 30 million more insured. No comensurate increase in the supply of physicians.
Just because they now have no insurance doesn't mean they never went to the doctor before or that they've never had any health care needs which needed to be addressed.
Everybody sees a doctor occassionally, so it's a simple matter to divide the population by the number of doctors. The resultant sum hasn't changed and won't change based upon the availability of insurance. All that changes is WHICH doctors they see and in what setting (office or ER).
When I was in my 20s and 30s, I did not think about health care much. It was out there in a vague way, if I should even need it.
In my 40s, things changed.
One day at work, I mentioned that I felt a bit off. The next morning I had a fever, highly sore throat, and an unsettled stomach. I went back to bed. I intended to call in sick, but somehow in my fever managed to convince myself I already had.
When I didn't call in with work, they got worried and called my personal physican. She rung my doorbell just after ten. I was examined in my living room, she thought it was flu, but my fever was on the high side. I was booked in with a specialist and saw him at two o'clock. Got something fever-reducing, was back at work again after the weekend.
But these are the things we must put up with, living with a UHC system that spends half as much per patient as the US system.
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