In 2003 I sprained my ankle and went to a doctor to be sure I had not incurred a serious injury. In the examination he noted my blood pressure was high. He gave me a large box of Lotrel 5-10 pill samples. There were eight bottles of 30 pills so I was covered for eight months.
As I opened the last box, as if by magic, an Indian drug merchant called and I asked if he had Lotrel 5-10; he did at a good price so I bought a six month supply, worked well, and I continued for ten years until they apparently stopped paying US lobbyists. The FDA outlawed imports of Lotrel 5-10 with no explanation I could document.
Lotrel 5-10 is a prescription drug so I called another clinic where I was charged nearly $300 for five minutes of a physician's time to look over my prepared medical records, ask a few questions and squibbled on paper something pharmacists go to school six years to learn to decipher.
The saving grace was that my Medicare supplemental cut the price in half! So I continued with Lotrel 5-10 for a year until I noticed my blood pressure readings, taken at CVS Pharmacy and Safeway Stores had very low pulse rates! When I complained to the store's staff of the machines malfunction they informed me they had been tested and were OK so I concluded the problem was mine.
That was confirmed when I went back to the clinic to renew the prescription, this time getting an Indian lady physician who became hysterical on seeing my pulse rate; gave me an EKG and said I should go to an Emergency Room! I did not, but on the way out to my car did feel a little "woozy." "Psychosomatic," I said to myself, but did make an appointment with a cardiologist at the local "Not for profit" hospital, one of a chain of hospitals in California.
Dr. "D" is an affable man and I had come well-armed having read published literature on Lotrel 5-10, but made no mention of this as physicians do not like patients who inform themselves and "...get it wrong." Sorry, I not only can read, but understand and document everything, including what they say.
In any important meeting I am "wired" as I want to document what is said to me by doctors and lawyers. Here you see a small, 60 by 20 mm, solid-state recorder I wear in any such meeting as I want to be very sure of what I was told as memory is not perfect and as time passes is less perfect.
A better suspension rigging than here shown can be made with 30 inches of dental floss, which is exceedingly strong, tied to sides of the flattened metal loop at the top of the recorder to aim the microphone correctly. With the attachments tightly on either side the unit will always be aimed forward and the floss is not visible under clothing. On arriving at your meeting you can go to a bathroom, reach inside your shirt or blouse and with a fingernail slide the "On-Off" switch, left to right, for "On" and you are good for two hours. Rare is the meeting that lasts even one hour.
Preserve or leave the original recording on the machine for legal documentation. Make a copy on your computer hard disk and edit out any spaces longer than ten seconds. Then copy those to other media for broadcast or depositions.
Meanwhile, after a look at my EKG recording Doctor "D" could not move fast enough to renew my Lotrel 5-10 subscription and immediately tell me I needed a "pacemaker!" Having known people with such devices I knew what he was sending me to: A system that would end participation in active sports, frequent, very expensive, periodic examinations and likely additional medications with more deleterious side-effects like those from Lotrel 5-10.
I did not attempt to get Dr. "D" to consider simply dropping Lotrel 5-10 in spite of my own science training telling me that was the first thing to do as he leapt on this case with prescription pad in hand as fantasies of how he could spend my money danced in his mind. How much money?
Pacemakers cost $20,000 to $100,000 and are all the same, have annual maintenance of $5,000 to $10,000, but I was quite certain this "Not-for-profit" bunch would bill me for ten times as much as they had billed me $20,000 for a acataractdectomy! Two master studies, summerizing many others, concluded they cost $2,000 in America and as little as $40 in India.
Adding insult to injury: The operating room needed paint and the operating microscope belonged in a museum, but where Nikon equipment is always excellent I did not object and having known my surgeon for ten years, I was with the best: All his previous work had been artful plus a visiting medical student asked to observe my operation, having gotten permission from my surgeon, I was in a very good, well-documented, situation.
In reaction to the outrageous bill, I documented everything, reduced it to a few punchy pages and sent copies to my county District Attorney, the hospital and a few select elected people to establish a witness chain and never heard another word from said "Not For Profit" hospital chain.
Meanwhile back at the crime scene, I went to work on the problem
and found that not only was Lotrel 5-10 indicated in irregular heartbeat cases, but getting off it was very tricky and I could kill myself by stopping it abruptly so I devised a plan to cut the dose in small steps over a month while monitoring my progress with a sphygmomanometer. It worked netting increasingly appropriate pulse rates per week.
This is a case of medicine poisoned by greed as well as an example of "Health Care" in America. This chain of 17 hospitals has a CEO who is paid over $18 million per year and 18 executives, per the annual report, "...that receive more than $1,000,000 per annum." If this is "Not for profit," then I am an Armadillo in toe shoes doing the "Swan Lake" ballet.
In a stepped compensation pyramid to keep co-conspirators happy, there would be six steps with 20% reductions in each. The sum of all levels would be $71 million for 19 guys playing Solitaire every morning until they go to lunch, then to mistresses or "the club" and golf. Hitting balls or balls hitting.
Meanwhile, Dr. "D" has to deal with the likes of me who research to find he is committing serious crimes against the august profession of medicine, but he did not invent avarice, nor is he alone.
"Doctor Error" is the second leading cause of death in America and we cannot help but wonder how many of these deaths were caused when elderly Americans opened their mail to see outrageous bills sent to them by "Not-For-Profit" hospitals. We believe that number is large and fatally poisoning medicine.
"Doctor Error" is the second leading cause of death in America and we cannot help but wonder how many of these deaths were caused when elderly Americans opened their mail to see outrageous bills sent to them by "Not-For-Profit" hospitals. We believe that number is large and fatally poisoning medicine.
Adrian Vance
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