Doctors, meanwhile, may benefit when they choose the more expensive drug. Under Medicare repayment rules for drugs given by physicians, they are reimbursed for the average price of the drug plus 6 percent.
Who could have predicted this would happen? Seriously, who?
who indeed, 1rudeboy.
Want another look at expensive drugs? A woman on Medicare in my neighborhood gets $6,000 worth of Provigil per month from the pharmacy. She then goes to a shady pharmacy and sells it for $1800 cash. I reported it to the police. They shrugged.
Maybe I should have called DEA? Or?
That explains a lot. I did not realize the physicians are reimbursed that way. For "given" drugs and/or prescriptions they write?
I went thru a medical nightmare last year, pains in heart, which I was pretty sure were caused by a series of sad events, one on top of the other. Called doc, they said come in. My regular doc sent me to big medical center with a highly reputable heart center. They got me right in, even tho I told them it was probably emotional pain.
Biggest heart doc in the area saw me, I told him it was probably emotional pain. And that I had been a little late, having RUN UP TWO FIGHTS OF STAIRS to his office therefore was out of breath.
He asked me a few questions, gave me a prescription (I told him whatever it was had to be very mild and the lowest dose possible because back in Seattle, where I used to live, "High Responder" is printed in red on all my charts. ( My doc there saw for himself the way I overreact to drugs).
And they scheduled me into nuclear stress test four days later.
The meds were WAY TOO STRONG, was unconscious for 16 hours after taking one pill. Was told to take 4xday. He had not listened to me. Naturally, I* took no more if that poison.
The stress test was horrible, I felt really roughed up, and AFTERWARDS they told me not to get near growing children for a few days because I was RADIOACTIVE and might damage their growth cycle.. Had I known that, I would have refused the procedure. Cat took one look at me and ran under the bed when I got home, and didn't come out for two days. Guess he did not like that blue glow, and neither did I.
When the results were in, my regular doc greeted me with a big smile: My results looked like the heart of someone 25 years younger. ZERO problem.
A week later, TIME magazine did an entire issue on the scandalous way hospitals overcharge. One of the cases they described in detail was exactly like mine, woman who was pretty sure her heart pains were not serious just checking it out. . Hospitals charge upwards of $20,000 to private insurance and even to uninsured people; Medicare pays them something like $1200. And the woman they wrote about had absolutely nothing wrong with her. Maybe indigestion. Massive indigestion now that she was stuck with a $22k bill.
Followup with the heart surgeon was just as ridiculous. He mentioned Plavix with a smile about ten times. I said no, I NEVER take anything advertised on TV. We batted that around for a few minutes and then he said, Well you can take aspirin then. And then he said, "You have to believe in drugs or they don't work."
Does that say everything you need to know about BigMed/Pharma?
There's a standard list of symptoms that will get you that kind of treatment. I had five of ten. But at the end of the day, I realized that there should have been many more questions; I'd have 5 of 50, which would have convinced any doctor worth his salt that I was at zero risk for a heart attack.
Gee whiz, I wonder who wrote those questions? Could it possibly have come from the Medical/BigPharma cartel?
We can only imagine how much worse it will get with obummercare.
Gee, sorry for ranting on….LOL…that was a year ago and I'm still furious, and every taxpayer should be too.