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Back Surgery, Cost of Insurance and Ineffectiveness of Care

April 13, 2011 by drburt

As the number of orthopedic surgeons in the USA is growing so is the number of back surgeries performed on patients with back pain. Often time it is a 50/50 chance that patient will be pain free after a surgical procedure due to the soft tissue fibrosis and lack of proper post surgical rehabilitation. Did you know that over 100,000 people die each year in this country from surgery complications. This number by far exceeds the number of automobile accidents in the entire country. The ratio is 23 percent for men and 32 percent for women.

It is not the secret that the health care system in this country is the most expensive in the world. Thus all U.S. citizens must get the best educated doctors who in theory would make the healthiest nation in the world and would provide the best medical care available. World Health Organization stated that as of 2000 the U.S. ranked #1 in cost, #72 in population health, #37 in health care delivery with 48 million Americans uninsured. France is ranked as #4, #4 and #1 and only 1% uninsured. The question is why French get more medical care for their money than we are?

TIME Magazine stated that U.S. spends more to get less then any other industrialized country in the world. Why such a waste of resources? This country spent twice as much on a sick-care as it did on food in 2006 and more than China’s 1.3 billion citizens consumed altogether. Wow, we can feed countries like India and China for the whole year.

President Barack Obama stated: “Today, we are spending over 2 trillion a year on health care – almost 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation. And yet, for all this spending, more of our citizens are uninsured; the quality of our care is often lower; and we aren’t any healthier. In fact, citizens in some countries that spend less than we do are actually living longer than we do.”

According to Forbes Magazine Back Pain cost over $40 billion for treatment alone. If we include disability, work loss and other factors the total cost would range somewhere between $100-200 billion per year. That is quite a large amount of money. Most of the countries do not even produce this much. About 3 million people went to Hospital E.R. for lower back pain which cost $9.5 billion. Low Back Pain is the number nine most expensive condition treated in U.S. Hospitals. If people could only maintain their bodies the way they maintain their vehicles things would be different. Regular Chiropractic care could prevent biomechanical vertebral misalignments and therefore save an individual from unnecessary expensive surgical procedure.

Pran Manga, PhD. MPhil health economist stated: “ There is an overwhelming body of evidence indicating that chiropractic therapy of lower back pain is more cost-effective than medical management.” Many other studies proved that chiropractic manipulation for none specific low back pain is far more effective than other forms of treatments. Millions of patients are satisfied with the results that they are getting with chiropractic care. Watch several video testimonials on this blog. Only 42 out of 131 military treatment facilities have access to a chiropractic care due to the medical bureaucracy within the Department of Defense.

What would you do if you had low back pain?

Go To a Hospital and Get Pain Killers and Possible Referral for a Surgery?
Go To a Chiropractor?
Do Nothing and Wait Till the Pain Goes Away On Its Own?

Medical Care Cost and its Relationship to Medical Education

April 12, 2011 by drburt

Many never think about Medical Care Cost and its Relationship to Medical Education. Recently I have come across a very interesting article about the cost of Health Care in the USA. Every American citizen thinks that US Health care system is best in the world. The reality is very different. The cost of the health care system in this country is the most expensive in the world. Many countries have as advanced medical care system as the USA with much less cost per citizen.

Many want to know when is the change going to happen? People are sick and tired of drowning in medical bills. It is never ending cycle. The cause could be, in my own opinion, is the high cost of education in this country and privatization of medical care. It takes about 11 years to become a medical doctor, and that is just being a general practitioner. If one wants to specialize in something, additional 4 years are required. The amount of loans these doctors take sum up to over $250,000 plus or minus. Most of it depends which school you go to and if you live on campus or not. It took me about 8 years before I saw the license of Doctor of Chiropractic on the wall in my office.

About 4 years of undergraduate studies, and almost 4 years of chiropractic school education. The verdict was over $100,000 in cost and that does not include undergraduate studies. These numbers were not this high before the birth of student loans.

Recently spoke to a 67 year old gentleman who is a retiring Chiropractor. He told me that back in days Student Loans did not exist. You pay out of your pocket for tuition and that was the end of the story. The cost was about $500 a quarter. Ten years ago I was paying over $5500 a quarter. Don’t really want to know what it is now.

One must understand that in order for a Chiropractor, Medical Doctor, Dentist or any other medical care provider to recoup the cost of Education process, one must be charging insurance companies for the services. This is a never ending process that can not be stopped unless the cost of education will significantly go down and health care will be free. That is communism and something I escaped 20 years ago and despised it all my life. Free does not necessarily means good. It is a human nature for an individual to excel at certain fields. People will always look for a better medical service around the block. Medical Care is just like everything else has become a business and each Hospital and private clinic treats it as one. The fuel for a medical facility is the amount of patients an institution is seeing and the type of Coverage an individual has. This is just my personal opinion and something that I have been observing for the past ten years working in a medical field.

What do you think the medical care should be like in the United States? Feel free to add any information in a comment area.

Barack Obama Letter About Chiropractic Care

March 4, 2011 by drburt

Dear Friends:

Doctors of chiropractic now make up over 60,000 licensed professionals in all fifty states, and care for millions of Americans every year. Almost a quarter of Iowans receivequality chiropractic care every year. As you know, chiropractic care is low-cost, drugfree, noninvasive, and has been shown to have a positive impact on patients’ health. I believe steps should be taken to acknowledge the important care chiropractors provide, and knock down unreasonable barriers of access and discriminatory insurance coverage that stand between so many patients and the care they need.

I have a plan to support doctors of chiropractic. First, I support expanding the range of chiropractic services covered by Medicare. Medicare currently provides reimbursement only for chiropractic adjustments, even though doctors of chiropractic are trained and licensed in all fifty states to provide a range of other Medicare-covered services. I support reimbursement reform that will reward and reimburse those who deliver high quality care and whose patients achieve good health outcomes, without restrictions against chiropractors or other health care professionals licensed to provide such care. Second, I recognize that neither the Department of Veterans Affairs nor the Department of Defense has achieved full integration of the services of doctors of chiropractic into their health systems despite direction from Congress. I support careful examination into the policy and practical barriers that restrict access to such services in order to remedy this problem. Third, I support commissioning doctors of chiropractic as officers in the Uniformed Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is comprised of approximately 6,000 public health professionals dedicated to delivering the nation’s public health promotion and disease prevention programs and advancing public health science. Given the critical role that doctors of chiropractic serve in each of these functions, I believe that we should commission chiropractors as officers in the Uniformed Corps. Finally, under the universal health care plan I have proposed, Americans will have access to a public insurance plan that will include comprehensive coverage, including all essential health care benefits. Benefits that are evidence-based or meet the current accepted standard of care would be eligible for coverage, and as such many, if not all, chiropractic services provided by doctors of chiropractic would be included in the public benefit package. My health plan also prioritizes preventive care, and chiropractors play a significant role in this effort. As we shift our health care delivery system towards a culture of wellness and disease prevention, I believe that chiropractors must play an integral role in expanding access to preventive care and strengthening our public health system. I look forward to discussing these important issues with you over the course of the next several months.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama