Pat Means

I'm sorry I a day late. I just found your site. I have a great deal of information to help you out.

The problem that the state and health insurance companies are having are coming solely from the doctor's themselves. As a 53 year old woman, married, with a son in college we've had more than our share of medical mishaps. Our neighbors and friends have all had terrible problems with the doctors also. It took l5 years for me to be diagnosed with moderate asthma and the incorrect testing and physician apathy that went on was outragious. My l9 year old son complained of chest pains when running when he was 5 years old. I went to his pediatrician and then to several family doctors and they just said he was being a teenager. They did ambiguous blood tests and said there was nothing wrong. I knew better because he was alway getting nauseated for no reason. At l8 years old I transferred to an Internist in Downers Grove, Ill. and demanded that he send Jeff to a cardiologist. After a few heart tests it was found that he had been born with a heart flap missing which was causing a leak in his heart. It took l3 years of misdiagnosing to finally take a simple test to find the problem. That l3 years of bogus payments to these physicians.

There's a whole lot more, not just from our house but from family and friends also. Our neighbor had a 3 year old son that was always running temperature and Diane pratically lived in doctor's offices and emergency room trying to convince someone that something was wrong. She was told he had a cronic ear infection and treated indifferently by the medical community. Both she and her husband are college graduates as are my husband and partially myself. My son's attending college now in Boston. The outcome to Diane's story is that her 3 year old son had a cancerous tumor in his chest. As a last resort her and her husband took there son in the middle of the night to Children's Memorial in Chicago but it was too late. It had been a year and they couldn't believe that that many doctor's could be mistaken. Their son died 2 years later at 5 years old.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that their are absolutely no regulations or strong legal sanctions against doctor's. They can pretty much do whatever they feel like and the apathy that doctor's have developed under this system is extensive. It takes the average person several visits just to possible get a test done. They will throw medications at you and say try this whether it's correct or not. They just keep you coming back in the office over and over again. It can be months or years before your finally diagnosed with anything and then it's usually in an emergency room.

My husband and I have paid, or the insurance company has paid, doctors who will just sit at their desks and tell you they don't know or they talk about totally unrelated issues and then charge us anyway. And we're not talking small bills.

A couple we knew had similar problems with neurologist in Hinsdale, Ill. Karen woke up one morning and she had no feeling from the waist up. Both she and her husband are Univ. of Ill. grads. So they deducted that it was a pinched nerve or somthing. But 2 weeks later it was still there so they were sent to a neurologist. While in the office the doctor asked her if she smoked and if she did that was probably the cause. When she said no she quite many years before she had her first child, she has three, he told her that that was probably the reason she had lost all her feeling in her upper body. Her husband and herself sat there flummoxed. They said that this was the most obnoxious conversation they had ever had with a physician. They were terrified that something terrible had was happening because it was going away. Fortunately 3 months later it just disappeared but to this day they have no idea what it was or what was wrong. They told us they laid awake night holding hands just frightened. They had good insurance and went, like us, to supposed good doctors in nice towns. This doctor had charge the insurance company and these people hundred of dollars for that visit. Also the family got to charge for several visits also even though his answer was continuously 'I don't know'. When they asked for testing the family doctor would just say 'let's wait and see and come back in two weeks'......for three months. That's alot of money.

There's no place to go to stop this unfortunately. If you try to stop it legally the lawyers just tell you how much money it going to cost you and it would be worth it, not to mention that the court dates and years away. So the lawyers are also racking up fees. There is no competent state or national department to contact and complain when the doctor's abuse their patients for more office visits or just because their totally apathetic or lazy. If I could get money whether I did my work or not and there was absolutely no outcome to doing so, you might be tempted to take the easist road also.

All the people I've talked to over the years about doctor's visits have always said the same things I am. We know it's the physicians causing the problem and we know there is nowhere to go and nothing to do about it. Reprimands are not reguarded by physicians as worth paying attention to. They just toss them. There has to be a consequence that will keep the physicians on their toes. It has to be harsh enough to make them want to do their jobs correctly or else it's just not going to happen. You have to give people someplace to call or correct legal action with well defined laws that the doctor's understand. Perhaps pulling their licenses or allowing lawsuits to favor the patients. Whatever works the best, it needs to be done immediately.

You'll be surprised how much money you'll save and the insurance companies could end up with so much money that perhaps this crazy HMO idea can actually be dropped. Cutting back on patient care isn't necessary at all. There's more than enough money to cover everyone. Just stop the doctor's from what there doing and it will probably all fall in line.