But unlike the lean NHS, there’s a spare tyre of fat on the system and any Briton who has been treated in America can tell you where it lies: around the bellies of physicians grown corpulent on prescribing unnecessary treatment.

To us it is unimaginable that a doctor would order a scan, pills, an invasive test, an operation even, not based on whether it will make us well but on how much he can charge.

I have to laugh at this comment and question the person who wrote it.
It show imagination and a facinating amount of stupidity.


MOST docs here in the U.S. do not have the equipment or facilities to perform half the tests they want to do.

They have to send people or blood, urine or biopsys off site to a lab. THe lab charges them to process the specimens.

If a MD does not do a test, order a scan or exam and the patient goes for a second opinion and is found to be negligent, he is in for a lawsuit.

There are only a few that would think about prescribing tests/exams to make money, Oh, you do have the doc that had to pay for the new x-ray machine he bought. But those AHs are few and far between.

I worked for an HMO who was trying to cut costs by telling the doctors NOT to ask for 'unnecessary' tests or exams.

The 'word' and emails ended up being made public-I think there were doctors who felt that they were put in very hard place as far as the care they were dispensing.


What do you tell a patient that has XXXXXXXX and you were unable to help them because you were asked not to test them for it?

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Here's a dirty little secret about sutures, the pharm companies and implant devices.


The companies who make them are vicious sellers of their components -
Don't blame the doctors for prescribing pills - there are only so many meds made that can be given for illnesses.

Same with stents, pacemakers, bone and other vessel replacement parts.

Sutures?

They come in so many versions it's like buying cigarettes.

Dissolveable and non, thin and thick thread, needle size and shape, materials

Our facility had entered into an agreement where the sales rep would come in and stock the shelves. The rep would bring in tons of sutures then charge the company, If suture was not used, it was taken off the shelves and replaced with suture that WAS used. The company was given credit for the unused suture and re-billed for the suture that was used.

At a higher price.
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Blaming the MD for the high price of HC is a crock of crap, a lie and shows how a 'journalist' can slant a topic to make anyone look bad.


The idiot who wrote that article needs a proctoscopic exam to have her brain examined.