{"id":3079,"date":"2009-06-27T18:45:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-28T01:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/?p=3079"},"modified":"2009-06-27T18:45:11","modified_gmt":"2009-06-28T01:45:11","slug":"a-plague-of-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2009\/06\/27\/18\/45\/a-plague-of-doctors\/","title":{"rendered":"A Plague of Doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"

El Paso County, eight hundred miles up the border, has essentially the same demographics … Yet in 2006 Medicare expenditures … in El Paso were $7,504 per enrollee\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhalf as much as in McAllen … Between 2001 and 2005, critically ill Medicare patients received almost fifty per cent more specialist visits in McAllen than in El Paso, and were two-thirds more likely to see ten or more specialists in a six-month period. In 2005 and 2006, patients in McAllen received twenty per cent more abdominal ultrasounds, thirty per cent more bone-density studies, sixty per cent more stress tests with echocardiography, two hundred per cent more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and five hundred and fifty per cent more urine-flow studies to diagnose prostate troubles. They received one-fifth to two-thirds more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes. They also received two to three times as many pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents. And Medicare paid for five times as many home-nurse visits. The primary cause of McAllen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El Paso County, eight hundred miles up the border, has essentially the same demographics … Yet in 2006 Medicare expenditures … in El Paso were $7,504 per enrollee\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhalf as much as in McAllen …...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1058,1062,418,793,1060,1057,10,1061,1059],"tags":[1845,1065,1428,1622,1064,1844,1368,1847,1846],"class_list":["post-3079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atul-gawande","category-el-paso","category-health-care","category-health-policy","category-mcallen","category-medicare","category-medicine","category-texas","category-the-new-yorker","tag-atul-gawande","tag-el-paso-texas","tag-health-care","tag-health-policy","tag-mcallen-texas","tag-medicare","tag-medicine","tag-texas","tag-the-new-yorker"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t