Trust

At some point you have to trust someone. Or not.

You have just received devastating news from your physician. You have a serious medical condition.

Scenario #1 – Your doctor suggests an aggressive course of treatment. Extensive and expensive. It might work. It might only give you a few extra months. But death is a certainty if you do nothing.

Scenario #2 – Your doctor advises you that all of the known treatments are painful, debilitating, and expensive. The likelihood of full-recovery is minimal, at best. He suggests palliative care and Hospice.

Do you view the doctor in the first scenario as a committed caregiver dedicated to doing everything to save your life or a shill for the medical industry prepared to profit from your illness and fear of dying? Do you view the doctor in the second scenario as a compassionate physician prepared to preserve the quality of your life or do you perceive a system that is prepared to sacrifice your well-being in an effort to save money?

Trust. Do you trust your doctor, your hospital, the insurance companies, or even the government? If you don’t, if you are positive that everyone involved is interested, first and foremost, in their own bottom line, than this discussion is over. There is nothing I can say that will change your mind or make an end-of-life discussion meaningful.

The balance of this blog is only meant for those with a healthy skepticism of our system and the players involved.

Medicine is an honorable profession populated by both the best and worst society has to offer. There are dedicated caregivers, committed claims staff, enlightened administrators, and elected officials prepared to do whatever it takes to make America safer and healthier. And there are people throughout the system who view the patient as either a profit opportunity or an unnecessary drain on our money.

There is no easy way to tell the difference, to know for sure that you are working with the right team. First you have to accept that there is a right team and that the system can work, that there are people up and down the chain who are willing to work on the patient’s behalf.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is again looking at physician reimbursements for advance care planning with their patients. Will doctors be paid for the time it takes to review all of the options open to their patients when they need this information the most, at the time of diagnosis and the beginning of treatment?

You may remember that this was a part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Those who choose to trust no one had their doubts. Some politicians called this “Death Panels”. This line of thinking works if you assume the worst of everyone involved.

But there is a counterbalancing argument. There have long been doctors and nurses who have questioned our end-of-life care. There are serious questions about whether average Americans endure more extensive treatments than similarly situated members of the medical profession. When is enough enough?

This blog, from its first post in 2009, has promoted adult conversations about healthcare and how we pay for it.

So it boils down to information. And trust. Mostly trust.

 

DAVE

www.bcandb.com