Skip to content
Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Final thoughts…

We’ve all gotten used to the idea that we are targets. Between the fine-print designed to limit our rights and recourse, the hacking and identity theft designed to drain our bank accounts, the monopoly-pricing, bankism and corporate manipulation, not to mention the countless ordinary scams, the average citizen is, like fish in a barrel, easy pickings.

Some will say it’s always been so, that those who can, take. But a January 31, New York Times article about the targeting of retirees for unnecessary medical tests made me think that society may have crossed the line of “normal” greed into truly dark territory.

You’ve undoubtedly read about the dollar cost of such tests, implicated in the rise of US health care costs and which physicians usually explain away as defensive medicine, meant to keep them from being sued. But there are other costs as well.

Data from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice shows that there are remarkably high rates of unnecessary medical testing and imaging in the states where retirees congregate, including Florida, Arizona, California, etc.

In Florida, for example, Dartmouth researchers found that Medicare patients in their last two years of life were prescribed tests far above the national average. Think about it. Some of these tests took hours to perform, and all required an investment of time in making the appointment, getting to the testing facility, getting home. Time for these patients in their last months is, clearly, at a premium and yet a large set of physicians were, and are, prepared to take it from them.

Comments are closed.