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American Medicine
With health care reform under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), doctors will become more overworked. To get better health care, you may have to see nurse practitioners. I agree with a recent editorial in the New York Times http://nyti.ms/VOJsWe which says that trained nurse practitioners may be able to replace physicians as the point of contact for prescribing care in many circumstances.
But these professionals do not have the depth of training and experience of physicians….
Healthcare reforms are already taking place every day. ObamaCare regulations should prompt you to ask some questions and explore some options so you are prepared and confident about your medical care.
The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is resulting in higher premiums for private insurance and for Medicare fees. These added costs are necessary to achieve widely supported goals of healthcare reform: more coverage for the uninsured; payments for preventive medicine; and elimination of pre-existing conditions, arbitrary insurance…
Health care reform is forcing doctors to work for less income. As a result, doctors are downsizing their practices – keeping fewer nurses and support staff on payroll. With fewer people to help you, your care will likely deteriorate.
When doctors sell their practices to hospitals or networks, they are typically restructured. When they restructure, the new arrangement can put the doctor under…
This past week, two patients complained to me about changes in the insurance co-payments required by their employers. A patient worked for 3M, retired, and signed up for Medicare. Previously, 3M had been paying for her Medicare supplemental insurance. She is now receiving therapy for her breast cancer. she told me the insurance administrator has just notified her that the payments for her Medicare supplement plan would be discontinued at the end of the year. …
Celebrities get diseases all the time. The news reports announce them as sensational events. But each celebrity who allows the media to report their illness and treatment actually helps each of us to improve our own health care. And we should never let their crisis and their lessons go unheeded by us personally.
Let’s go down the list and see the tips that their stories tell us:
Amy Weinhouse died of alcohol intoxication, possibly due…
Hillary Clinton had a blood clot in her leg in 1998. Recently, she developed an unusual blood clot outside of her brain, and she is again on anticoagulants (blood thinners). Because she has now had two blood clots, Hillary should be evaluated for a possible hypercoagulable state, a genetic tendency towards recurrent blood clots.
Many patients get blood clots and they can be life-threatening. Because of this, knowing if…
We live in a society obsessed with weight, body image, food and physical appearance. There is a consistent battle of “fat vs. skinny” that our culture fights with every day – both sides having negative and positive aspects. Being overweight has been long recognized as an adverse health risk, as having a higher body mass has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease, earlier death and some forms of cancer, while being skinny,…
Healthcare in America is becoming more complex. As described by M. Smith and coauthors in their recent article, “What’s Needed Is a Health Care System That Learns,” each Medicare patient now has an average of 7 doctors in 4 different practices, and each doctor must interact with over 200 other physicians to care for all of the practice’s Medicare patients. It is expected that the increase in chronic conditions by 26% between 2000…
As we approach 1-1-13, we are aware of the fiscal cliff, which every media source is covering. But worse, in my estimation, is the approaching Medicare and healthcare cliff, also arriving 1-1-13.
On 1-1-13, without congressional action, payments for all Medicare services will decrease 30%. What effect will this have on your care?
There is a 25-40% chance your doctor will retire, stop seeing Medicare patients, or stop participating in Medicare (requiring you to pay…
Would you ever expect a doctor to protest on your behalf regarding the cost of a medical treatment? Well you should, because they do! Aflibercept (marketed as Zaltrap), a new medication that is effective in cancers of the colon and rectum, is extremely expensive; the estimated cost of this treatment is $11,063 per month….