Time for another appalling health insurance story. Today we’ll discuss an invention of theirs called Step Therapy, allegedly created “for your safety and to control health care costs.” It won’t surprise you that its real purpose is to generate massive revenues for their bottom line. Unfortunately, you, the patient, virtually always suffer unnecessarily in the process.
Category: H
Homeopathy and Kids
About 25 years ago, when my boys started being born and getting acquainted with Chicago–and also before I became involved with alternative medicine–the oldest began to get ear infections. At the time, I was medical director of a big group of very conventional doctors and had access to some really good pediatricians. My son was prescribed antibiotics, his ear cleared up, but when the antibiotics were stopped, up popped another infection. Then, more antibiotics and later yet another infection.
Money and Happiness
“Money won’t make you happy.” A boring cliché, hammered into our heads by our moms since that gleeful afternoon when we showed her our first day’s profits from the lemonade stand. We still try our best to believe it, but secretly we don’t. In our hearts we’d like–just once–to be tested with wealth.
Creativity and Health
After you’ve been a doctor as long as I have, you feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations, broad observations, and the like about the patients you’ve been attempting to keep out of harm’s way as efficiently as possible.
Hormones and Breast Cancer
By noon on the day the story hit the news, I’d received a dozen emails from (sensibly) concerned patients asking what the study meant for them. First appearing in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) and then picked up by the wire services and spread around the world, the article addressed phase two of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Study that was originally published in 2002.
Franz Kafka and Health Insurance
I visited the ancient city of Prague in the Czech Republic a couple of weeks ago, where the novelist Franz Kafka, now considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, has grown into a local cultural hero.
How Would You Rate Your Handshake?
Is yours pathetic? You know the type I’m referring to–that near-death handshake you’d expect from the dying Mimi at the end of La Boheme. Or is it the reverse? Have you reached out with your firm grip only to receive a pathetic little dead fish of a handshake in return?
Health Care Reform: My Long Sigh of Relief
I’d been watching CSPAN on and off since 9 a.m. Sunday morning. Twelve hours later, by the time the House finally passed the health care reform bill, I was emotionally exhausted, had a throbbing headache, and was getting depressed over how I’d write this health tip if the bill failed to pass.
Healthcare PTSD
A new syndrome is on the rise, and I call it healthcare PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I’m seeing more and more examples of it among my new patients and it’s got me worried. Why? Patients are coming to me with symptoms of depression/anxiety and/or obsessive thinking triggered by having entered the health care system. Our US health care system, allegedly the finest in the world.
Huperzine A
For centuries in the Far East, traditional healers have used a rare moss (Huperzia serrata) found in the colder regions of China to remedy fever and Inflammation. Only recently did scientists uncover a remarkable quality in a substance they isolated in the moss. Called huperzine A, the compound appears to have the power to sharpen the mind and potentially ward off the devastating effects of the memory-robbing disease known as Alzheimer’s, particularly in its earliest stages. Huperzine A has also been proposed for countering normal bouts of forgetfulness in the general population.
Can I Quit My Heartburn Drug?
“As long as I’m trimming my daily prescription drugs,” remarked Mary, who had recently quit her cholesterol-lowering statin after shifting to healthful eating, “what about this Nexium? I admit I have some misgivings about stopping anything that seems to be working so well!”
I hear that a lot. Some patients have been taking a chronic heartburn drug for such a long time they don’t remember who prescribed it in the first place.
High Blood Pressure
One of the most common reasons people give for coming to our practice is to see if there’s “something other than all these pills” they’ve been prescribed for a medical problem. I frequently hear sentences such as, “I read the side effects of this drug and think: but those are the symptoms I’m being treated for,” or “I take all these pills and I feel pretty much the same.”
Hopping for Strong Bones
Although it’s the Christmas season, the title is not Shopping for Strong Bones. It is actual hopping, of the jumping-up-and-down variety. With or without a mini-trampoline (great fun, by the way, and readily available online).
Exercise researchers are spending more time these days determining which forms of exercise actually produce specific health benefits. Several weeks ago I wrote about the findings that exercise didn’t help with weight loss unless you cut calories, too.
Holiday Stress Rx: Ten Tips
December is a stressful month, especially for women and despite all the holiday cheer.
Some of you might be thinking “But he’s Jewish–what does he know about Christmas stress?” Here are my credentials: I’ve been married for many years to a Christian woman and I’ve watched as she and our extended family become fried by the stress during every holiday season. Also, my patients tell me the holidays stress them, period.
Healthy Living is the Best Revenge
In a recent health tip I commented that we Americans hadn’t learned much when it comes to taking care of ourselves.
Health Care Reform and You (and Me)
As the Washington battles over health care reform continue, these past weeks have left me seriously conflicted. My moods swing between glee at the thought of health care reform and gloom as it seems we’ve once again capitulated our country’s needs to corporate bottom lines. You’d think that as a lifetime Chicagoan, I’d be used to this by now.
This is Your Moment (And You Didn’t Even Know It)
I’m surprised there’s been no mention in the newspapers or on TV of a newly published article from the prestigious American Journal of Medicine. Maybe it’s that we’re all suffering a bit of bad-news fatigue and the media decided to take mercy on us. Let’s face it. The conclusions from an immense survey (40,000 participants […]
Horse Chestnut
Every autumn, the shady horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) produces prickly fruits containing one to three large seeds, or “nuts.” In the 1800s, European doctors figured out that an extract made from these seeds could help treat varicose veins, hemorrhoids, and other disorders caused by fragile veins and sluggish circulation.
Horehound
Ancient Greeks reportedly relied on horehound (Marrabium vulgare) to treat mad-dog bite, which explains the “hound” in this plant’s name. But over time, it has been this herb’s power to control a cough that has made it so popular. Soothing teas, lozenges, and syrups concocted from its wooly leaves and white flowering tops make a cough more productive by stimulating phlegm (mucus) output in the airways. Colds, bronchitis, and other minor respiratory problems often respond to horehound treatment as well.
Herbal Digestive Formula
Naturopathic doctors have long recommended a classic herbal digestive combination (variously known as Robert’s or Bastyr’s Formula) for controlling the intestinal pain and inflammation associated with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, both inflammatory bowel diseases.