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Pam, you'll never convince me that mammograms for women under 50 is not a good thing. I spent 4 Months doing chemo with 12 women week after week. Half of those women were under 30 and three of those 6 were in their 30s with young children. Two of those 3 are now dead from metastasized breast cancer.. All of us did the full Monty, mammogram, needle biopsy, surgical biopsy, bone and body scans. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but it is what you do when you discover a lump or have unexplained pain or swelling in your breast. Only 2 of the 12 had a family history of breast cancer. ALL of us had been doing regular annual mammograms.
Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, is the 3rd largest NCI certified research facility in the USA. It, along with cooperating facilities such as Morsani Center and USF Health are on the cutting edge of all things cancer. Moffitt just announced the ground braking of it's cancer genetic research facility. Technology, such as the Kubtec XPERT 40, is making a world of difference in the OR and has much promise for radiology seeding. My surgeon, Dr .Charles E. Cox used this technology during my surgery. As explained in the article below, it saved time and costs and provided pinpoint accuracy.
http://kubtec.writeappeal.com/wp-content...orsani.pdf
To sum it up.. We have come a hell of a long way in medicine and health care (not just breast health), but I see it coming to an end with more and more government intervention. Especially with panels that don't even have doctors from a given medical discipline make decisions out of their field that affect millions of people.
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August West wrote:
Are you to Medscape's 2012 Physician's Compensation Survey?
I'm trying to understand your point by point argument in re michaelb's post. I am not seeing it in the only survey I can find that seems to match your reference. I ask again, is this the survey upon which you base your argument?
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swampy wrote:
Pam, you'll never convince me that mammograms for women under 50 is not a good thing. I spent 4 Months doing chemo with 12 women week after week. Half of those women were under 30 and three of those 6 were in their 30s with young children. Two of those 3 are now dead from metastasized breast cancer.. All of us did the full Monty, mammogram, needle biopsy, surgical biopsy, bone and body scans. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but it is what you do when you discover a lump or have unexplained pain or swelling in your breast. Only 2 of the 12 had a family history of breast cancer. ALL of us had been doing regular annual mammograms.
Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, is the 3rd largest NCI certified research facility in the USA. It, along with cooperating facilities such as Morsani Center and USF Health are on the cutting edge of all things cancer. Moffitt just announced the ground braking of it's cancer genetic research facility. Technology, such as the Kubtec XPERT 40, is making a world of difference in the OR and has much promise for radiology seeding. My surgeon, Dr .Charles E. Cox used this technology during my surgery. As explained in the article below, it saved time and costs and provided pinpoint accuracy.
http://kubtec.writeappeal.com/wp-content...orsani.pdf
To sum it up.. We have come a hell of a long way in medicine and health care (not just breast health), but I see it coming to an end with more and more government intervention. Especially with panels that don't even have doctors from a given medical discipline make decisions out of their field that affect millions of people.
Swampy, read what you wrote "when you discover a lump or have unexplained pain or swelling in your breast." That is NOT the same as a screening. No one recommended not getting checked out if you have a problem or concern. Screenings do not apply to those people. Screening are for the asymptomatic. Further you wrote "ALL of us had been doing regular annual mammograms." which is exactly why the recommendations were changed. Screening did not do what it was touted to do. Especially for younger women. Screenings failed you and countless others because they have tremendous weaknesses. You're on a bandwagon that has no wagon. All screening was doing was running up costs, lining some pockets, and generating a huge number of unneeded biopsies.
Your panels already exist. They are called insurance companies! The idea that someone in DC is now going to be making your medical decisions is ludicrous and nothing more than fud you soaked up from your party. And btw, pharma and medical equipment companies are also making decisions for you and the impetus for their actions has nothing to do with your health. Pharma moans and groans about costs of developing new meds but only spends 12% on research. And they have no qualms about replacing out of patent meds that were proven and worked with newer patented meds with dicey scientific studies. Heck mammograms replaced thermography. Which was cheap and could be immediately used in your gyn's office to see if inflammation was present. It just wasn't a money maker!
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To sum it up.. We have come a hell of a long way in medicine and health care (not just breast health), but I see it coming to an end with more and more government intervention. Especially with panels that don't even have doctors from a given medical discipline make decisions out of their field that affect millions of people.
That entire post was a long-winded way of saying death panels.
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swampy wrote:
Pam, you'll never convince me that mammograms for women under 50 is not a good thing. I spent 4 Months doing chemo with 12 women week after week. Half of those women were under 30 and three of those 6 were in their 30s with young children. Two of those 3 are now dead from metastasized breast cancer.. All of us did the full Monty, mammogram, needle biopsy, surgical biopsy, bone and body scans. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but it is what you do when you discover a lump or have unexplained pain or swelling in your breast. Only 2 of the 12 had a family history of breast cancer. ALL of us had been doing regular annual mammograms.
Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, is the 3rd largest NCI certified research facility in the USA. It, along with cooperating facilities such as Morsani Center and USF Health are on the cutting edge of all things cancer. Moffitt just announced the ground braking of it's cancer genetic research facility. Technology, such as the Kubtec XPERT 40, is making a world of difference in the OR and has much promise for radiology seeding. My surgeon, Dr .Charles E. Cox used this technology during my surgery. As explained in the article below, it saved time and costs and provided pinpoint accuracy.
http://kubtec.writeappeal.com/wp-content...orsani.pdf
To sum it up.. We have come a hell of a long way in medicine and health care (not just breast health), but I see it coming to an end with more and more government intervention. Especially with panels that don't even have doctors from a given medical discipline make decisions out of their field that affect millions of people.
Hang in there Swampy. Some research is being done on infrared technology...I'm not sure where it is headed. We may have a non-invasive way to detect increased cell growth in the future...
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August West wrote:
[quote=August West]
Are you to Medscape's 2012 Physician's Compensation Survey?
I'm trying to understand your point by point argument in re michaelb's post. I am not seeing it in the only survey I can find that seems to match your reference. I ask again, is this the survey upon which you base your argument?
It may be in the compensation survey. It may also be a separate survey--I can't honestly recall. I recall that it was from medscape, where they polled 20,000+ doctors about their opinions of the quality measures...
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Acer wrote:
I don't disagree that unreasonable malpractice actions exist, nor that defensive medicine is practiced, and I do agree that these areas can stand reform. But the numbers just don't add up to the level of crisis claimed.
"The cost of medical malpractice in the United States is $55.6 billion a year, which is 2.4 percent of annual health-care spending, a new study shows.
The researchers said their estimate includes $45.6 billion in what's known as defensive medicine costs -- when doctors prescribe unnecessary tests or treatments to avoid lawsuits."
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/man...year-in-us
Older article, feel free to find a better one.
Eliminating that 2.5% expense outright is just not going to make much difference. And relative to the income of the health care industry, this expense is not that big. Even doubling it by doubling Medicaid patients is not going affect the bottom line more than a relative blip.
You have to be careful how that 2.4 percent of healthcare is calculated. They usually just lump everything, including pharmacy, equipment, home health aides, hospitalization, and etc and etc into that denominator. If you take the parts where doctors are responsible for, number becomes increasingly larger.
Furthermore, I think that 2.4 percent is a low ball number. I know that CYA occurs fairly frequently.
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wowzer wrote:
You have to be careful how that 2.4 percent of healthcare is calculated. They usually just lump everything, including pharmacy, equipment, home health aides, hospitalization, and etc and etc into that denominator. If you take the parts where doctors are responsible for, number becomes increasingly larger.
Furthermore, I think that 2.4 percent is a low ball number. I know that CYA occurs fairly frequently.
The study's authors are quite clear about how that 2.4 percent was calculated, and what it includes:
"Some of the numbers bandied about in policy discussion were quite imaginative and we wanted a more defensible estimate."
For the study, Mello and her colleagues analyzed numerous areas of the medical liability system, including payments made to malpractice plaintiffs, defensive medicine costs, lawyer fees and other administrative costs, along with the costs of lost clinician work time."
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wowzer wrote:
Hang in there Swampy. Some research is being done on infrared technology...I'm not sure where it is headed. We may have a non-invasive way to detect increased cell growth in the future...
My gyn was making use of thermograms back in the early 80's. A handheld film used right in his office. Cheap, quick, easy to see vascular activity. Too bad it's taken this long to get back to it.
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