Re: Herd instincts?

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:13:18 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 11:26:22 -0500, Spehro Pefhany
<speffSNIP@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

In your actual experience, what's the typical time duration between
referral by a family doctor to a specialist and surgery? (including
wait for an appointment, tests, pre-surgery assessment(s), further
tests, and scheduling of actual surgery? Assuming worst case
("elective" surgery, which presumably might get bumped for people with
life-threatening conditions).

[snip]

I first saw the hip surgeon on August 8, scheduled surgery for October
31, so it can take some time.

In between though, I had an extensive cardiac evaluation, and then a
complete general physical with tests for _everything_.

Total tab, ~$80K. Looks like my out-of-pocket will be $156 for lab
tests that Medicare deemed to have been previously done less than a
year ago.

...Jim Thompson


I had a benign tumor in a salavary gland. Once the ENT saw it, I had a
head MRI and two biopsies within about 3 weeks, and surgery 2 weeks
after that, when all the lab results were in. It cost $44K, of which I
paid about 3%.

If someone is diagnosed with an invasive cancer, it's common to have
surgery in a day or two. I'm seeing about 2-3 weeks average to see a
doctor or get a major procedure. Basic lab stuff is walk-in.

That's on my wife's Blue Cross, which is actually pretty bad. My
employees are on the Kaiser HMO, and Kaiser is amazing. You visit a
doctor there and if, say, you need an xray or a lab workup, they often
do it on the spot. I had one of those pre-cancerous skin things, a
karatitus (rotten Irish skin and too many sunburns) and showed it to
my Kaiser doc; she called in a dermatologist, they discussed it, and
he blasted it with LN2, all in about 10 minutes. I'm dumping Blue
Cross and going back to Kaiser soon; they take full systems
responsibility.

John

.

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