patrick.net

Meccos Please delete your duplicate post.

Unfortunately, a lot of people fit this category in the medical profession.

curious2 says

Whatever time you spent in medical school did not teach you the basic humility required to practice medicine, including especially the ability to admit when you are wrong.

Hes picking winners and losers. Only a medical system that has a lower chance of Malpractice suite will work. Keep the Lawyers out.

FYI, the US spend over $240B each year on Malpractice costs, but only $2B on Small Business Innovative Research for the NIH, Dept of Health, DOT, DOD. Yes that means on Lawyers who add no value get paid 220 X the technical R&D.

So why then are are health care costs so high. Thats the answers, and answers all the questions about "Why are health care cost so high in the US". Its the Lawyers d_ _ _ _ !

Entitlemented, your numbers are way off, and you don't cite any sources. Actual malpractice costs are one quarter of your number, 2% of total spending. The issue is a red herring, a false Republican talking point.

BTW, hospitals injure 20% of patients, including 100,000/year who die from nosocomial infections.

Take care.

zzyzzx says

Meccos Please delete your duplicate post.

Have curious delete them... he keeps flagging my posts as spam, getting them deleted.

Email from Patrick:

"He was marking all your comments as spam. I unmarked them so they are visible again, and I took that ability away from him, which he got in an automated way just by being a long-time user of Patrick.net.

Let me know if he manages to spam any more of your comments. Thanks!"

Meccos says

Have curious delete them... he keeps flagging my posts as spam, getting them deleted.

Incorrect. I did not flag any of your posts as spam.

curious2 says

Meccos says

Have curious delete them... he keeps flagging my posts as spam, getting them deleted.

Incorrect. I did not flag any of your posts as spam.

Funny the email from patrick states otherwise... I suppose patrick is a liar...

curious2 says

Entitlemented, your numbers are way off, and you don't cite any sources. Actual malpractice costs are one quarter of your number, 2% of total spending

Even if it is that low, it's still 2.4% that we can't continue to throw away. It's welfare for lawyers.

zzyzzx says

all the extra stuff doctors do avoid lawsuits

That myth has been debunked at length including on this forum. Long story short, "tort reform" (taking away injured patients' right to sue for malpractice) actually increases costs because entrepreneurial doctors take advantage and cause more injuries. BTW, the 2% includes the total amount, i.e. including what the patients received, including their medical costs to treat their nosocomial infections and malpractice-related injuries, e.g. if the hospital cuts off the wrong leg and then you need a prosthesis which costs $.

Meccos says

Email from Patrick:

"He was marking all your comments as spam. I unmarked them so they are visible again, and I took that ability away from him, which he got in an automated way just by being a long-time user of Patrick.net.

Let me know if he manages to spam any more of your comments. Thanks!"

Meccos says

I suppose patrick is a liar...

@Patrick, if you have time, please illuminate Meccos. I have tried, but he does not believe me.

curious2 says

zzyzzx says

all the extra stuff doctors do avoid lawsuits

That myth has been debunked at length including on this forum. Long story short, "tort reform" (taking away plaintiffs' right to sue for malpractice) actually increases costs because entrepreneurial doctors take advantage and cause more injuries.

wrong. defensive medicine is practiced every day and there is a cost to this.

Also I would love to see evidence to prove that tort reform increases costs because "entrepreneurial doctors take advantage and cause more injuries". Regardless of tort reform, malpractice cases are constantly getting get trialed or settled, which ruins physicians professionally and financially, leaving really no reason for these doctors to "take advantage and cause more injury" as you suggest. Injuries will always happen unfortunately...

curious2 says

Meccos says

Email from Patrick:

"He was marking all your comments as spam. I unmarked them so they are visible again, and I took that ability away from him, which he got in an automated way just by being a long-time user of Patrick.net.

Let me know if he manages to spam any more of your comments. Thanks!"

Meccos says

I suppose patrick is a liar...

@Patrick, if you have time, please illuminate Meccos. I have tried, but he does not believe me.

Ok curious,

SO the random email I receive from Patrick Titled "Sorry about Curious2"
which is copied in the previous post is something I just made up...

Meccos says

I would love to see evidence....

Just follow the links. That's why I provide links. Unlike you.

curious2 says

Meccos says

I would love to see evidence....

Just follow the links. That's why I provide links. Unlike you.

Curious unfortunately the links you post do not answer the questions which I specifically asked. Read my post and please respond with evidence to the specific comment you made.

Meccos says

Curious unfortunately the links you post do not answer the questions which I specifically asked.

What were your questions? I don't see any question marks, only false statements that were refuted in the linked articles.

curious2 says

Meccos says

Curious unfortunately the links you post do not answer the questions which I specifically asked.

What were your questions? I don't see any question marks, only false statements that were refuted in the linked articles.

Here is my question:
Meccos says

Also I would love to see evidence to prove that tort reform increases costs because "entrepreneurial doctors take advantage and cause more injuries". Regardless of tort reform, malpractice cases are constantly getting get trialed or settled, which ruins physicians professionally and financially, leaving really no reason for these doctors to "take advantage and cause more injury" as you suggest. Injuries will always happen unfortunately...

Again no question marks, follow the links to see the report.

Curious...
the links you provide mainly talk about unethical physicians who do procedures unnecessarily to make money. The truth is that you will find people like these in any industry. However some physicians being unethical and the cost of defensive medicine are completely separate issues, which you seem to blur. Unfortunately there will always be physicians who are unethical. However, make no mistake, the threat of malpractice DOES change practices of HONEST physicians and WILL increase costs.

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=416067

curious2 says

Again no question marks, follow the links to see the report.

again copped out on answering an obvious question regardless of whether there is a punctuation point or not.

From one of the linked articles: "El Paso and McAllen function under the same Texas malpractice laws that capped malpractice awards in 2003. As doctors there noted to me, premiums have gone down substantially, reflecting the major drop in lawsuits. And even if McAllen doctors were especially fearful of lawsuits, it is hard to imagine that “defensive medicine” would lead to McAllen’s vastly greater number of pacemaker insertions, knee replacements, carotid operations, coronary artery stents, or home-nursing visits. Certainly the doctors I spoke to there did not think lawsuit fears affect their decisions for surgical therapies and other such interventions."

curious2 says

From one of the linked articles: "El Paso and McAllen function under the same Texas malpractice laws that capped malpractice awards in 2003. As doctors there noted to me, premiums have gone down substantially, reflecting the major drop in lawsuits. And even if McAllen doctors were especially fearful of lawsuits, it is hard to imagine that “defensive medicine” would lead to McAllen’s vastly greater number of pacemaker insertions, knee replacements, carotid operations, coronary artery stents, or home-nursing visits. Certainly the doctors I spoke to there did not think lawsuit fears affect their decisions for surgical therapies and other such interventions."

Again, you blur the lines of dishonest physicians who increase medical costs by unnecessary procedure with the actual cost of defensive medicine. I am not saying that some physicians dont this... all I am saying is that there are TONS of other HONEST physicians who will order extra tests which eventually increase medical costs. You seem to think that there is no distinction here.

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=416067

should provide some evidence to back my claim.

Curious I will give you another example of how defensive medicine costs money...

Millions of dollars each year are spent on unnecessary tests like MRI's and blood work. Contrary to the article you linked, physicians who order these tests cannot financially benefit due to federal laws that prohibit the prescirbing physician having ownership of the diagnostic centers. These tests are ordered to avoid lawsuits... yet the physicians do not benefit financially in these cases. This is an unnecessary added costs clear and simple.

Meccos says

should provide some evidence to back my claim.

It doesn't. It's a mail-in survey with a 50% response rate asking about physicians in general, not respondents' own personal behavior. Essentially they asked, "Do you agree with the Republican talking point repeated endlessly on TV and elsewhere," half said yes.

BTW, what area of medicine do you practice, and do you order up extra tests and procedures as defensive medicine?

curious2 says

Meccos says

should provide some evidence to back my claim.

It doesn't. It's a mail-in survey with a 50% response rate asking about physicians in general, not respondents' own personal behavior. Essentially they asked, "Do you agree with the Republican talking point repeated endlessly in the evening news," half said yes.

BTW, what area of medicine do you practice, and do you order up extra tests and procedures as defensive medicine?

No it was a simple question asked to hundreds of physicians from different specialities from many different regions. The simple question was "Do doctors order more tests and procedures than patients need to protect themselves against malpractice suits"

Unfortunately, you completely misread the article. ABout 50% responded back to the survey. However of thsoe that responded back, 91% believed they ordered more test and procedures to protect themselves...

Please read more carefully before you respond. makes you look silly

Meccos says

91% believed they....

Please check again your use of the word "they." The survey asked respondents to speculate about the behavior of physicians in general, it did not ask them to report their own experience.

Which brings me back to my question, which you have not answered. What area of medicine do you practice, and do you order up extra tests and procedures as defensive medicine?

curious2 says

BTW, what area of medicine do you practice, and do you order up extra tests and procedures as defensive medicine?

Yes, me and every one of my colleagues have admitted to ordering things unnecessarily. Unfortunately, I would not be surprised if EVERY single physician in this country has done this. Rather I would be surprised if one physician has NEVER done this.

Almost always, the decision to do this is based on the patient. You may never know, but many patients often demand these tests and even THREATEN lawsuits...

curious2 says

Please check again your use of the word "they." The survey asked respondents to speculate about the behavior of physicians in general, it did not ask them to report their own experience.

Which brings me back to my question, which you have not answered. What area of medicine do you practice, and do you order up extra tests and procedures as defensive medicine?

They are "physicians" and since all these people are physicians, i wrote "they". What is the point of even commenting on this? If you have nothing better to say, just dont say it. Distraction is pointless.

Also give me more than 3 minutes to respond... why so anxious for my responses?

Curious.

Let me ask you something serious. Why are you so resistant in believing that defensive medicine exists and it adds to the cost of health care???
Especially when someone like myself and hundreds of others in the industry admit that we have experienced this.

one other thing... you know I am a physician. Just so I know what your background is and where you get your info from, what do you do and where?

The question, "Do you believe that Physicians..." invites the respondent to speculate about the behavior of others, not to report their own behavior. If it were a study of physicians' own behavior, it would ask, "Do you do this..." not do you think other people do.

Why are you so resistant to disclosing your area of practice? If you were proud of it, you would disclose it, since you boast endlessly about how much $$$ you make at it. I have a guess...

curious2 says

The question, "Do you believe that Physicians..." invites the respondent to speculate about the behavior of others, not to report their own behavior. If it were a study of physicians' own behavior, it would ask, "Do you do this..." not do you think other people do.

Hahahahh pointless for me to keep going. Even if i give you evidence you wont accept it.

Obamacare will need to cost a lot to pay for all the useless "healthcare" including the $$$ Meccos boasts of:

"The total cost of treating back pain in the United States has risen 65% in the last decade, but after all the pricey treatments, many people are still left with an aching back and an increasingly empty wallet, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.

They said treating spine problems in the United States costs $85.9 billion a year, rivaling the economic burden of treating cancer, which costs $89 billion.
***
Yet, for all of the spending, they found people with spine problems actually felt worse."

In health, there is very little correlation between spending and results.

Meccos says

That article you quote is an LA times article. Hardly credible research. Even if this were true, im not a spine surgeon. Try a little harder next time. BTW you gonna respond to any of my previous posts or will you continue to distract everyone by going off topic?

I'm inclined to believe that the LA Times article is understating the health care spending problem in that it's not just back treatment spending that is ineffective and way more expensive than it used to be.

Meccos says

one other thing... you know I am a physician

So I am guessing that you like Obamacare since it's essentially more welfare for doctors?

Meccos says

Hahahahh pointless for me to keep going. Even if i give you evidence you wont accept it.

Just like you.

Meccos says

Curious.

Let me ask you something serious. Why are you so resistant in believing that defensive medicine exists and it adds to the cost of health care???

Especially when someone like myself and hundreds of others in the industry admit that we have experienced this.

So you are agreeing that the lawsuit reform can save way more than the 2.4% number cited above?

Battle of the trolls. LOL.

Meccos says

Why are you so resistant in believing that defensive medicine exists and it adds to the cost of health care?

Because the claim has been investigated and refuted. To be fair, I don't say it doesn't exist at all or that it doesn't add anything, but the evidence shows that "tort reform" (taking away patients' right to sue when they are injured or killed by malpractice) does not on balance reduce costs. To the contrary, it increases costs. When there is no accountability, the incentives are all one way: more. More unnecessary and injurious procedures (e.g. useless back surgery that carries a risk of paralysis), more prescriptions, more more more, because the fee-for-service model creates myriad opportunities for revenue and kickbacks without accountability as reported from Texas and elsewhere. Consider the unnecessary and injurious coronary bypass operations reported in Redding, for example. When you take away accountability, you take away "defensive medicine", but you don't reduce costs; they increase. Every unnecessary bypass operation adds a cost of $10k/year for the remaining life of the patient, if nothing else goes wrong, i.e. if the patient doesn't die on the table. When a hospital amputates the wrong leg, what kind of person says the hospital shouldn't even be required to buy a prosthetic for the person whose leg they cut off? By far the largest cost associated with malpractice is the cost of the malpractice itself, including a hundred thousand Americans killed by hospital-acquired infections each year. And Obamacare responds to all this by requiring even more of the same, everybody mandated into the same system, with unlimited upside for hospital corporations ("No lifetime caps! We can all be Terry Schiavo now! Yay!") at the expense of every other priority.

Typical MD lack of logical/critical thinking. To learn how to conduct an argument, here is a list of intellectually honest and dishonest debate tactics

http://www.johntreed.com/debate.html

Typical MD tactic: My resume’s bigger than yours. All the more reason why you ought to be able to cite specific errors or omissions in my facts or logic, yet still you cannot........Got tons of relatives just like you

Peer approval of subjective opinion: “Proving” correctness of a subjective statement by citing the approval of political allies in the same subject—so-called peer review in academia. Peer approval has value when it relates to objective standards like those in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Such peers check the accuracy of calculations, the cleanliness of laboratories, and whether they can replicate the results in their own experiments. But peer review is of little probative (proving) value when it relates to subjective areas like sociology, economics, or women’s studies where the peers in question, and indeed the whole field or large portions of it, have a particular political agenda. What is considered correct academic teaching in high schools is determined by long-term, circular, self-reinforcing, peer group-think unaffected by results achieved by their students........I will add: medicine often falls short of this standard (esp psychiatry)

JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, is often a circle-jerk. Lot of articles don't properly disclose their potential and absolute sources of conflict of interest. Also, based on your speaking style on this forum, it's also probably the only thing you've read in last 20 years also while proclaiming to be an expert. Try reading pubmed more often. And when you come across articles that prove your point, post them here so we can read them.

I have 30 uncles, first cousins and second cousins in medicine and I'm gunning for 2015 residency. So what is your point?

Meccos says

Just so I know what your background is and where you get your info from, what do you do and where?

But radiologists sure do. It seems like they make the money they make not as a value-add, but just to help doctors practice CYA medicine. One estimate (can't remember where) was that it was about 4.4 billion dollars a year.

Meccos says

yet the physicians do not benefit financially in these cases. This is an unnecessary added costs clear and simple.