cutting your medical costs...

Green stuff rules  - all you need is cash (via the LA Times)

thanks for the link Bjarne

 

Comments

[Roger]

A pill for anything...

The FDA is looking out for our best interests, right? Right? Well, they say that they verify the truthfulness of Direct To Consumer advertising, and I suppose they verify the accuracy of all contraindications. And I suppose that the FDA has verified that all such contraindications have been included in the fine print so small that it will fit on the head of a pin.

Contraindications? What are they?

Noun 1.contraindication - (medicine) a reason that makes it inadvisable to prescribe a particular drug or employ a particular procedure or treatment

A reason that makes it inadvisable to prescribe a particular drug? What kind of reason? Inadvisable? Who decides what is inadvisable? Now that definition sounds awfully vague to me. Let us try again.

contraindication
[-in′dikā′shən]
Etymology: L, contra, against, indicare, to make known
a factor that prohibits the administration of a drug or the performance of an act or procedure in the care of a specific patient. For example, pregnancy is a contraindication for the administration of tetracycline, immunosuppression may be a contraindication for vaccination, and complete placenta previa is a contraindication for vaginal delivery.

To make known a factor? Which factor might that be? That is even more confusing.

Again?

contraindication (kon´trin´dikā´-shn),
n any symptom or circumstance indicating the inappropriateness of a form of treatment otherwise advisable. This is further divided into the concepts of absolutes and relative contraindications.

Any symptom or circumstance indicating the inappropriateness... Now we are getting somewhere. Any circumstance indicating the inappropriateness. Whoa! Any? That means that if the FDA is really looking out for my best interests they ought to have more than 40 people keeping tabs on the drug industry, would not one think? Forty people verifying the accuracy of tens of thousands of new drug advertisements and contraindications? They would have Superman looking like a wimp.

And then there are the concepts of absolutes and relative contraindications? Absolutes? What is that? If you take this pill with that pill, you will die!!! Relative? If you take this pill with that pill with eight ounces of water and there is no ring around the moon, unless you take the pill before dusk and...

But let us not stop there... Can we be even more specific?

contraindication
any condition that renders a particular line of treatment improper or undesirable.

Any condition? Now we are into conditions.

Suppose that I am stupidly taking ten or fifteen drugs, or that I must really, really take those ten or fifteen drugs to save my life, and then I read about this new-and-improved miracle drug that comes with six pages of fine print so complicated that even lawyers cannot understand it. Then I run to my doctor with the add and he is more than happy to prescribe this new-and-improved miracle drug because he is getting kickbacks and maybe a world cruise, depending on how many prescriptions he writes. And I can rest assured that those 40 people over there at the FDA have verified that this new-and-improved miracle drug will not interact improperly or undesirably with any of those ten or fifteen drugs or with any combination of those ten or fifteen drugs that I'm already taking? You bet your knickers! If the FDA says it is so, then it is so!

And then I am surprised a year later when my doctor informs me that I have this new, rare form of cancer, for which he is ready to prescribe yet another ten or fifteen drugs and maybe get another world cruise.

Of course I still have to decide whether to charge my insurance or pay cash.