Abbot Laboratories - Another Dirty Drug Company

This drug behemoth hired a doctor who had been barred from practising at a local hospital for allegedly putting heart stents in hundreds of patients who didn't need them. Here is where I agree with tort attorneys. This doctor bragged of setting a record on inserting 30 stents in one day, most of whom, it is alleged, didn't need stents.

Read the whole article in today's WSJ, p. 1 in section B1.

I have long contended there are doctors here in Peoria getting more wealthy by recommending unneeded expensive procedures; a local doctor telling me I needed immediate prostrate surgery when it turned out I didn't. This doctor said he discovered cancer in my bladder, it was removed while I was put "under" surrounded by his nurses and specialists. These actions caused me to seek another opinion. I've been going to a new doctor for the past eight years with no discovery of return. My new doctor explored the same way only once; one nurse and without anesthesia, no problem, and never again, saving Medicare thousands of dollars. I return each nine months or a year for a check-up.

Many months ago, I went to a prominent and well advertised skin doctor, who had a free skin cancer screening. He circled a a couple of spots on my face and told one of his nurses to set up an appointment to "burn them off". I sought a second opinion and found that these "spots" were "probably" ageing spots. He recommended nothing be done and these spots are now barely visible on my face.

Many years ago another local doctor told me I needed to use a mask at bedtime as I occasional snored. A local medial store was only too anxious to lease me the machine for a year, Medicare would pay for it, and then I could by it and Medicare would pay for it. I should add that the doctor who recommenced this clumsy device, did not even visit me but had me sent to the hospital over night where all sorts of tests were done on me.

No, I didn't buy the device. I did report him to Medicare. After several months they replied that they did not have enough complaints from others to take any action.

Why don't I snore now? I sleep by laying on one side or the other. Ask my wife.

Unfortunately, many doctors are in business to make a lot of money.
All drug companies are committed to making money for their stockholders. All, it seems, except Pfizer, who pays enormous golden parachutes to their top executives while their stock has lost 50% of it's value in the last decade. I see in today's WSJ that Pfizer's CEO is resigning "because of fatigue". Burnt out at 55??? Probably the retirement benefits will pay about what he is today earning in salary. Plus he will remain on the paid board, one of many boards he is on, all paying large amounts for each meeting.

It is easy to scare a client into thinking they need stents, anaesthesiologist, breathing devices or expensive medications plus frequent trips to their doctors office.

Today, I have the best of doctors and since my triple by-pass in 2004, I carry on almost all the activities I did 6 years ago including playing competitive tennis at least 3 times a week. The best advise I hear from my doctors? "Whatever you are doing, keep doing it".

Blame the high cost of health on the law-mkaers, over-zealous doctors, greedy doctors, yourselves by rushing to get a doctors appointment when in time the symptoms go away, and your own health abuse, the major cause of rising health care costs. For example, if you are a smoker, very overweight or heavy drinker, I don't want to pay your Medicaid costs.

Period and sorry. For you.

And of course, obesity. No guys and gals, you aren't stout, you are fat. Please do something about. It has been proven millions of times that you can reduce your weight. It will cause your friends less worry, you will eventually feel better, spend less time sitting in waiting rooms and save the taxpayers a lot of money.

Some reading this will tell me that so and so waited to late before seeing a doctor. That is true but common sense enters into every thing that we do. I have been to emergency for a nose bleed that wouldn't stop and a bleeding mouth from a pulled wisdom tooth. The nose bleeds stopped when a doctor FINALLY recommended the use of Triple Antibiotic Ointment occasionally inserted up my nostrils to prevent the drying which causes the inner skin to crack and bleed. Bleeding mouth? Cut down on the blood thinner and hope a good doctor is on emergency. I went to OSF and a know-it-all youg doctor sent me home whie I was still bleeding> I told him so but he said I was fine. At 3 AM, I woke up with blood everywhere. A GOOD doctor used the proper material, stopped the bleeding and THEN sent me home.

About three years have passed with no more nose bleeds.

I should also add that I am on a blood thinner due to a small TIA suffered while I was playing in a tennis in a tournament in Warsaw, Indiana in the mid-eighties. When the numbness started in my right hand, my wife took me to the local hospital where I was soon properly diagnosed, underwent a series of tube insertions with liquids and tests, I was back to normal by midnight and my wife and I drove home the same day. (the local doctor wasn't too excited by that) The doctor did instruct me to call my doctor Monday. My doctor asked me if I needed to see him. I said, no. He wrote a prescription for a blood thinner and I do go in every month to have the thickness of my blood tested.

I never stopped playing competitive sports even though I also suffer from irregular heart beat and neuropathy.

High health costs are mainly our fault. When I visit a doctor office, I note that almost 50% of the folks in the waiting room are overweight, some obese. Why worry what we eat or drink? Uncle Sam will take care of you. Some doctors are over protective and over proscribe medications; I have an elderly sister in a nursing home and she takes what medicines the nurse gives her with no idea of what they are or what the cost is to the government.

The health care system needs to be shaken up. Fraud and misuse of the system runs into the hundreds of billions each year. ObamaCare will make costs go higher as we turn more to being a socialist country where our main concern is the country having enough money to take care of us in our old age.

At age 85 and a half, scooped my own large driveway Saturday and played tennis Friday and Sunday.

Not bragging, just the facts.

Do I recommend my own doctors? Yes, Jim Kenny, Bob Bauernfeind and David Rodenburg.

I also recommend a health care bill where the patient has to pay a lot more than they are paying now for some procedures they wouldn't ordinarily have done if THEY had to pay the costs. To many people who are told someone else is buying go for the most costly on the menu and of course, dessert.