So, remember when our entire healthcare system was overhauled so that everyone could finally benefit from "preventative care"? Legislation was passed to require that all of our health insurance policies would provide "free" annual exams because it would make us all healthier and would be less costly with all that early detection and stuff. Well, if you do, then this ought to interest you...
Perhaps you remember Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, He is the brother of current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who was also the former Chief of Staff to President Obama. And you may remember that Dr. Emanuel was one of the chief advisers who helped create the "Affordable Care Act" that would ovehaul our entire healthcare system. As part of the grand overhaul, it requires that said "free" annual exams would be provided by physicians and insurance companies at "no cost" to the patient.
Well, now Dr. Emanuel (brother of Rahm) has just offered his opinion that all those preventive exams are, in fact, a load of bunk. In his latest Op/Ed piece in the New York Times from Friday - Skip Your Annual Physical, he pretty much spells out how research shows that annual exams do nothing to help uncover or prevent chronic diseases such as heart disease or other chronic diseases. Instead of people dying in the streets for lack of available and adequate preventative care for which we just overhauled our entire healthcare system to correct, it turns out that two of the top "leading causes of death in Americans" are "uintentional injuries and suicides". So all of those routine tests that doctors put you through in those annual exams have no benefit except in the rare occasion that some underlying condition just happens to be discovered by accident. Yeah, you are more likely to die by accident that to have some disease diagnosed by accident.
Here is what he writes -
Of course, like when they said doctors just did toncillectomies to increase revenue, according to Dr. Emanuel, they also have been pushing the whole bogus preventative care thing too. But as I recall (and correct me if I am wrong) we were told repeatedly by the pro-ACA'ers that if only everyone could get all those "preventative care" exams, then no one would ever need real healthcare again because doctors would catch all those expensive diseases and conditions before they became really expensive diseases and conditions and we would all be much healthier and happier and the Earth would begin to heal and Peace would break out and...oh, wait that was something else.
Anyway, so where before we had insurance that did not cover "preventative care" like "wellness" visits and gym memberships, it did cover much less likely catastrophic events like broken bones, cancer treatments and chronic illnesse. Now we are forced to pay for insurance mandated by the US Government that will fully cover worthless "preventative care", but barely cover the less likely really bad stuff. Help me to understand why anyone ever thought this was a good idea.
Perhaps you remember Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, He is the brother of current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who was also the former Chief of Staff to President Obama. And you may remember that Dr. Emanuel was one of the chief advisers who helped create the "Affordable Care Act" that would ovehaul our entire healthcare system. As part of the grand overhaul, it requires that said "free" annual exams would be provided by physicians and insurance companies at "no cost" to the patient.
Well, now Dr. Emanuel (brother of Rahm) has just offered his opinion that all those preventive exams are, in fact, a load of bunk. In his latest Op/Ed piece in the New York Times from Friday - Skip Your Annual Physical, he pretty much spells out how research shows that annual exams do nothing to help uncover or prevent chronic diseases such as heart disease or other chronic diseases. Instead of people dying in the streets for lack of available and adequate preventative care for which we just overhauled our entire healthcare system to correct, it turns out that two of the top "leading causes of death in Americans" are "uintentional injuries and suicides". So all of those routine tests that doctors put you through in those annual exams have no benefit except in the rare occasion that some underlying condition just happens to be discovered by accident. Yeah, you are more likely to die by accident that to have some disease diagnosed by accident.
Here is what he writes -
"Regardless of which screenings and tests were administered, studies of annual health exams dating from 1963 to 1999 show that the annual physicals did not reduce mortality overall or for specific causes of death from cancer or heart disease. And the checkups consume billions, although no one is sure exactly how many billions because of the challenge of measuring the additional screenings and follow-up tests."
Of course, like when they said doctors just did toncillectomies to increase revenue, according to Dr. Emanuel, they also have been pushing the whole bogus preventative care thing too. But as I recall (and correct me if I am wrong) we were told repeatedly by the pro-ACA'ers that if only everyone could get all those "preventative care" exams, then no one would ever need real healthcare again because doctors would catch all those expensive diseases and conditions before they became really expensive diseases and conditions and we would all be much healthier and happier and the Earth would begin to heal and Peace would break out and...oh, wait that was something else.
Anyway, so where before we had insurance that did not cover "preventative care" like "wellness" visits and gym memberships, it did cover much less likely catastrophic events like broken bones, cancer treatments and chronic illnesse. Now we are forced to pay for insurance mandated by the US Government that will fully cover worthless "preventative care", but barely cover the less likely really bad stuff. Help me to understand why anyone ever thought this was a good idea.
ACA was a scam to hand 16% of the US Economy into the hands of the USGOV. That's all that it was.
ReplyDeleteThere was another article I believe in Science last week (it actually got more press than it deserved by publishing a known obvious) that 2/3 of cancers are due to....
ReplyDeleteWait for it...
Bad Luck
Bev, This doesn't surprise me. The reason is that they need to get costs down. Getting people to see a doctor for free will result in some form of treatment just to make the trip worthwhile. So by telling people to skip the free visits, they reduce the cost of that treatment, even if it results in long term and bigger problems remaining undiagnosed longer.
ReplyDeleteEssentially, I see this as a political opinion rather than a medical one, with the intent being to allow the system to continue by discouraging people from using it.
Ezekiel Emanuel, MD: Con man and snake oil salesman.
ReplyDeleteKoshcat - I saw that! Yes, after generations of cancer research and trying to find out a definitive cause (environment, familial genetics, etc.), someone now has concluded it is just happens to be one lonely regular cell that whimsically turns into a cancer cell. Kind of like when a moderate Muslim whimsically turns into an Islamic cancer on the world. It's kind of the whimsical and capricious.
ReplyDeleteAndrew - and in another article for The Atlantic, Dr. Emanuel expounds on how we spend way to much on healthcare for the elderly because we all lose our usefulness by age 75 anyway...
ReplyDeleteIt is beginning to appear that the plan has really been to build some Logan's Run-kind of Utopia where only the young, vital, and beautiful should have the right to live and once you reach a certain age (35 in the movie), you are "voluntarily" released from your mortal coil...
I Hope To Die At 75. It's not that I don't necessarily agree with the fact that we over extend human life to the point of agony and that it is very expensive to do so.
But one month to say growing old is too expensive and then a few months later add to that premise that actually making sure that you are healthy in middle age is too expensive too. Well, it should make everyone uneasy.
Writer X - No, he's a specialist and researcher who has never actually treated patients as people. And he is politically connected, so he arrogantly thinks he knows better your needs that the average Joe-Family physician does. He's Rahm's brother and gets to talk to the President whenever he wants!
ReplyDeleteDr. Emanuel does not see the advantage of people who go to a family physician just to touch base every year to make sure that the ticker is good and to develop a relationship with their doctor. Emanuel does not seem to grasp that real doctors use all their senses (sight, sound, touch, smell and sometimes taste) to detect slight changes that may mean something to them, but of which you may not be away. That's what happens when one sees their family doctor every year.
ACA was a scam to hand 16% of the US Economy into the hands of the USGOV.
ReplyDeleteLL - Yes, that is exactly what it was for and people bought it because they thought we all would benefit from it. Oh, well, as usual, the Democrats/Liberals meant well, but it is just not turning out the way they hoped and dreamed it would. Darn those unanticipated and unintended consequences!
The right really needs to drive home the fact that the political left is the real anti-science wing.
ReplyDelete"studies ... dating from 1963 to 1999"
In other words, they plowed ahead with the ACA based on a notion that was debunked almost a decade prior. And this isn't the first time I've heard that preventative care is a fairy tale fantasy. This was being floated in the early 2000s but, interestingly, the topic was scuttled around the time of the '08 elections.
Tryanmax - They knew even during the HillaryCare years when the same fight was underway to institute HMO's so people could go to the doctor more often and just built from there and only pay a small "co-pay" usually $5 bucks.
ReplyDeleteAnd this has never been what real "insurance" was designed for. Insurance uses the odds to gamble that nothing will happen and no payouts would be needed. Even Life Insurance payouts are much higher the younger you are and the older you get to payouts diminish to almost nothing
Heath Insurance as ALL insurance is designed, was supposed to be for those unexpected events and catastrophic occurrences - like permanent injury, catastrophic injury, hospitizatiosn, etc. - which as I can't help repeating - are few and far between for almost everyone (KNOCK ON WOOD).
The other issue with all that "healthy preventative care and maintenance", is that it has caused a host of other more costly problems for those "I will Never Die as Long as I keep Moving" 50-somethings.
ReplyDeleteAll of those weights lifted and laps run for all that healthy active living has cause a dramatic increase in muscle and joint problems and a dramatic increase in necessary joint replacements and permanent injury problems...
That guy said he only wanted to live to 72. We can't afford to have people stay alive to 90. This was kind of the idea behind "death squads." We don't have the resources to give every legal or illegal living in the U.S.A. state of the art free health care. In order to get it passed, lies were required. Going forward, the bill is too high, so either we have to pass it along to future generations, and/or reduce costs. Best way to do that is asking old people to just go die.
ReplyDeleteBev, The irony is that the left would have embraced Logan's Run in the 1960s and1970s as highlighting just how evil capitalism and its need to satisfy a "bottom line" really are. But now they would flip that around and decide whether or not you're worthy of getting treatment.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that surprises me, but it does make me realize just how sick the left is in its view of utopia.
tryamax, Science is meant to support the leftist world view, not challenge it.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the left thinks the same about everything.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteTo the Left everything proves they are right. And if it disproves their thesis they must (1) ignore it, (2) censor it, or (3) attack it viciously as sexist/racist/homophobic.