"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Screen or Else: Medicaid is threatening to suspend doctors' Medicaid payments if they fail to screen for lead poisoning in children under six. That won't help. I order lead screening routinely in children on Medicaid, but less than fifty percent of them ever get the test. Their parents don't take them to the lab. Now, the government is talking about penalizing the physician for the patient's non-compliance. I've got news for them. Medicaid has such a poor re-imbursement that no doctor is going to miss it. Doctors who accept Medicaid patients do it out of altruism, not for profit. Withholding payments from doctors will only make them more likely to drop the program altogether. The poor certainly won't be served by such a policy. They won't be able to get needed care for illnesses and for immunizations, all because the government has a bee in its bonnet over a screening test. The last time I had a patient with a high lead level was fifteen years ago. It isn't that common a problem in every neighborhood. If they really want to eliminate lead poisoning, they could hire public health nurses to go out to the high risk areas and do testing at homes and in neighborhoods. Oh, but that would take money, whereas their current plan would save them money. posted by Sydney on
6/07/2002 07:09:00 AM
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