Big Insurance and Health Care Control

This is certainly a telling revelation.  And if you've been following Natural Health News and Creating Health Institute you've been well aware for decades that Big Insurance does control the health care delivery system.

Certainly it controls the fact that unless you pay on your own, you won't get thermography, the earlier detection system fro breast cancer by a decade.   It certainly limits your access to care of your choice, even natural health care options.

While this article refers to breast cancer therapy, please understand that Big Insurance has its greedy fingers in every health care diagnosis.

It also is chafing at the bit to control the new and hybrid health care approach, scathingly referred to as "integrative", "complementary", "alternative", "holistic", and even the newly created form called "naturopathic medicine" (not the real naturopathy of my work since the late 60s and that many of several of my colleagues).

And you can be sure this control will have nothing to do to control health care costs and improve delivery.  It will surely aim to lower reimbursement rates and more out of pocket costs for you.

Insurance affects breast cancer therapy

HOUSTON, April 29 (UPI) -- Breast cancer therapy is affected by where a woman lives and whether certain treatment is included in Medicare reimbursement, U.S. researchers say.

Dr. Benjamin D. Smith of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues used Medicare data for 26,163 women with localized breast cancer who had undergone surgery and radiation therapy from 2001 to 2005.

Smith says they focused on intensity-modulated radiation therapy -- a radiation delivery technique that modulates the radiation to maximize the dose of radiation to the tumor while minimizing the dose to adjacent normal tissues, reducing radiation side effects.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that billing for intensity-modulated radiation therapy in regions of the country where local Medicare carriers covered intensity-modulated radiation, was more than five times higher than in regions where it was not covered.

The average cost of radiation within the first year of diagnosis was $7,179 without intensity-modulated radiation therapy and $15,230 with intensity-modulated radiation therapy, Smith says.

The study authors conclude the data "suggest that with respect to breast radiation therapy, much of the variation in cost can be directly attributed to inconsistent treatment definitions and reimbursement rates authorized by Medicare and its intermediaries."

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/04/29/Insurance-affects-breast-cancer-therapy/UPI-14141304057524/print/#ixzz1KvWbzKNb

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.