Category Archives: In the Money

Greed does not heal – it kills.

High Volume, BIG Dollars & Rising Tension

…and the story comes Full circle.

The Swedish-Cherry Hill campus, in Seattle’s Central District. (Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

Quantity of Care ~ A special Investigation
In its ambitious rise to become one of the largest hospital systems in the country, Providence Health & Services struck a deal in 2011 to claim a Seattle-area rival, Swedish Health.

Providence added five hospital campuses in the process, including Swedish-Cherry Hill, an institution with a storied history and a budding reputation as a global center for neuroscience research, treatment and clinical trials.

Just a few years later, Providence and Swedish had overhauled the way Cherry Hill’s neuroscience program approaches the business of medicine, enriching the nonprofit institution and its star surgeons.

A steady churn of high-risk patients undergoing invasive brain and spine procedures allowed Cherry Hill to generate half a billion dollars in net operating revenue in 2015 — a 39 percent increase from just three years prior. It also had the highest Medicare reimbursements per inpatient visit of any U.S. hospital with at least 150 beds.

By those metrics, Providence’s acquisition of Cherry Hill has been a rousing success story, but the aggressive pursuit of more patients, more surgeries and more dollars has undermined Providence’s values — rooted in the nonprofit’s founding as a humble home where nuns served the poor — and placed patient care in jeopardy, a Seattle Times investigation has found. Continue reading →

Tamiflu Hallucination Outbreak Spread Across U.S.

~ Forewords ~
I lay the FAULT of this kind of Big PHARMA murders right at the feet and laps of the entire medical profession. I have yet to meet any doctor or all those TV mouths on the so called *news* stations who are constantly hammering folks to get the Flu Shot or some other Big Pharma concoction and REFUSING to tell folks about the pH balance that PREVENTS the viral and bacterial illnesses. The goal is to make MONEY and the information on how to PREVENT an illness does not make them any money – the FACT that those Big PHARMA concoctions kill people is never mentioned until enough of them die that it has to be reported on. Continue reading →

The Cancerous Politics and Ideology of the Susan G. Komen Foundation

Run for the Money

February 1, 2012 ~ This week it became clear there are things more important to the Susan G. Komen Foundation – the fundraising giant that each year during breast cancer awareness month virtually swathes the United States in pink, a la Christo–than ensuring women are able to access exams for early detection of breast cancer.

What could be more important to an organization ostensibly dedicated to the elimination of breast cancer? Answer: The politics and personal agendas of the organization’s senior staff and board, both of which have been infiltrated by right-wing ideologues and both of which were instrumental in a decision to deny further support from Komen affiliates to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide breast exams.In fact, it is now clear that Komen has been infiltrated at various levels by anti-choice ideologues willing to sacrifice women to breast cancer to satisfy their own agendas. Continue reading →

A Seven-Step Plan for Ending the Opioid Crisis

More treatment. Stronger oversight. And above all, bolder leadership.

Oxycodone is a narcotic pain reliever, an ingredient of painkillers that have contributed to the current opioid crisis. Photograph: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images

~ Foreword ~
This following article lacks understanding of cause and effect. The government caused the opioid crisis. They made pain the 4th vital sign. Every clinic and hospital was evaluated, surveyed, and rated on whether a pain score was done on each patient and if the pain was helped by the doctor. Ratings and financial rewards were tied to the outcome. ( sounds like the VA scandal doesn’t it? ) Every doctor with a working brain thought this was foolish and would lead to addiction. The Electronic Medical Record has continued this as a performance standard. Babies have their pain score recorded in ER notes. Here is my solution: 1. Dump the pain score. 2. Dump the EMR that depersonalizes medicine. 3. Teach your children that pain during life if normal. 4. Stop pretending that we can prescribe narcotics and they will not be addicting. ~ Rosemary Stein, MD
 Continue reading →

Cancer Drug Price Rises 1,400% With No Generic to Challenge It

Show me de monee!

Since 2013, the price of a 40-year-old, off-patent cancer drug in the U.S. has risen 1,400%, putting the life-extending medicine out of reach for some patients.

Introduced in 1976 to treat brain tumors and Hodgkin lymphoma, lomustine has no generic competition, giving seller NextSource Biotechnology LLC significant pricing power. Continue reading →

The FDA Is Cracking Down on Homeopathic Remedies

Gwyneth, watch out.

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to crack down on so-called “homeopathic remedies”—treatments that due to agency enforcement policy have managed to avoid regulatory oversight.

But no more, says the agency. Many of those products, it said in a statement, aren’t just herbal tea cures for a sore throat. They’re products being marketed as treatments for serious diseases—hope bottled up and sold to desperate people, without any sort of clinical evidence that they might actually work. Continue reading →

A LOST VOICE

Artwork by Talia Goldenberg

After enduring years of painful headaches and injuries, Talia Goldenberg — a lively, uninhibited artist — was ready for surgery to help stabilize her flexible spine.

3:46 p.m. Feb. 10, 2014
Talia Goldenberg emerged from the fog of anesthesia. The 23-year-old wiggled her toes. She wagged her feet. Good signs for a patient coming out of spinal surgery. Continue reading →

Medical tyranny: Woman who rejected breast cancer diagnosis may still be forced undergo surgery without her consent

When a doctor suggests an operation that you don’t feel is necessary, you have the right to decide not to move forward with it – right? If you happen to have any sort of mental illness, it’s something that doctors could use to say you’re not in your right mind to make such decisions and then go ahead and do as they please regardless of your opinion. Continue reading →

Legal drugs kill more people than illegal ones

Research shows prescription drugs are the 3rd leading cause of death

According to Peter C. Gøtzsche, a Danish physician and medical researcher, prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Based on the findings that Gøtzsche studied, it is possible that “psychiatric drugs alone are also the third major killer,” and this is primarily due to antidepressants causing the deaths of many elderly people through falls. It is apparent that the system we have for “researching, approving, marketing and using drugs” is “totally broken.” Continue reading →

Why Is An Appendectomy In The United States 10 Times More Expensive Than An Appendectomy In Mexico?

This is what can happen when you go to a socialized healthcare system. A lot of people out there believe that the United States has a free market healthcare system, but that is actually not true. The percentage of the population that receives government-subsidized healthcare is rapidly approaching 50 percent, and the healthcare industry may be the most heavily regulated sector of the entire U.S. economy. Every year the rules, red tape and regulations seem to get even worse, and every year health insurance premiums rise much faster than the overall rate of inflation. If we don’t start applying free market principles and start getting healthcare costs under control, our entire healthcare system could very easily implode. Continue reading →