Much has been written about the healthcare crisis in the country -- almost 50 million uninsured, costs continuing to escalate driving businesses out of business. But the thing that doesn't get talked about much is the quality of healthcare we're receiving. Follow me over the jump for some personal stories.
My partner has high cholesterol. His doctor immediately prescribed a statin drug, which he refused to take, because he had seen the damage it had done to his mother. After doing a little research, he discovered the following:
- Your total cholesterol number is virtually meaningless, something even the "mainstream" medical establishment now acknowledges.
- Even your HDL and LDL numbers alone are virtually meaningless. There is "small particle" and "large particle" HDL and LDL. Small particle cholesterol is the "bad" cholesterol. If you have a high LDL number, but it is comprised of "large particle" LDL, you have little to worry about. Likewise, if you think you're in the clear with a high HDL, if it "small particle" HDL, it's not nearly as effective as large particle HDL. You can read more here. My partner had high levels of "small particle" LDL, which sounded ominous.
- But here's where it gets really interesting. Even those numbers are meaningless. The bottom line on cholesterol is this: it's only dangerous if it's building up on your artery walls. The only way to find that out is to have coronary artery heart scan for plaque (AKA elctron beam tomography). My partner had one (which insurance would not pay for) and found his arteries were clear. No need for concern. His cholesterol numbers were rendered completely moot.
And yet I'm sure we all know people who are on statin drugs on the say-so of their doctor based on nothing more than their HDL and LDL numbers. And yet, those drugs have been shown not to work.
My own story goes like this: One night while dining out, I started having the need to urinate about every 15 minutes. This lasted for a couple of days, so I went to a doctor that was on my insurance plan and whom I knew because we used to both live in the same condo building. I told him my symptoms and he immediately said, "Sounds like diabetes." Which was ridiculous because I had no other diabetes symptoms and no history of it in my family. But he took a urine sample, which came back with high keotones, which he said supported his diagnosis. He didn't mention that high keotones also occur when people are fasting, which I told him I had been doing.
Long story short, he did blood work and, of course, no diabetes, no prostate cancer, etc. So then he says "you have an enlarged prostate." He declares this without even doing a digital exam!!! He gave me some free sample of Avodart, which I threw away and cured myself with Saw Palmetto. My partner asked this same doctor for some information on melanoma because his mother had just been diagnosed and his response was "Just search the Internet."
My last example (and believe me, I have plenty of others!!) is that my father-in-law is currently in the hospital for a variety of ailments after having back surgery. He was taken to the ER after vomiting and being unable to breathe. It took days for his family to finally discover who was responsible for his overall care and when they discovered this, the doctor in charge said, "I'm not going to tell you what's going on. If you want to know, you need to find me and ask me specific questions."
My whole point here, for those of you who have been waiting patiently for the punch line, is that doctors seem to be getting lazy. I don't know if they're overworked, or scared of lawsuits, but they make hasty diagonses and immediately bring out the prescription pad, when prescription drugs are increasingly dangerous. This, to me, it as equally alarming as the number of uninsured.