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"Fire Escape" is a story on CNN tonight about the American Health Care System. The program's premise is to explain that the current medical system in America is not about keeping our citizen's healthy but about generating profits for insurance companies, hospitals, medical manufacturing companies and the major drug companies.
One section of the program appeared in print on the CNN website:
-- The dramatic story of Dr. Erin Martin, an Oregon primary care physician fed up with being pushed to treat patients faster and faster to boost clinic profits. She enrolled in the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine's Fellowship Program to find a better way, explaining that "I'm not interested in getting my productivity up -- I'm interested in helping patients."
Every day I explain to my patients that I have no interest in cutting down your beautiful, natural tooth structure so that I can place a crown and increase my profits. Every day I explain to my patients that what they pay me for is to allow them to walk out of my office with every millimeter of healthy natural tooth structure that they walked into my office with.
Unfortunately, many patients are more concerned that their insurance company will pay more to destroy their teeth by approving crowns than they will to place beautiful, strong, tooth conserving direct resin bonded restorations. Who cares if your insurance company will pay for a crown? Is the crown the BEST treatment for the tooth?
As the physician from Oregon said, "I am not interested in getting my productivity up-- I'm interested in helping patients." I second that feeling.
