GREED, the Oath of the Hypocrits

Doctors take an oath, one that is supposed to be honorable , humanitarian and reinforce the ethics of the profession. What happened? GREED. GREED GREED
I have tried to warn people, do not trust your doctor, question , review, research, get second opinions, do everything that you can to make sure that the treatment you are getting is actually what you need to get. I have told some of my story on here, I have lost much of my eyesight by trusting doctors that I should not have trusted! I still suffer from a condition that very well may make me lose more of my sight, even to being totally blind! I have pointed out what they could have done to help me after the original mess made of my vision, yet they cared only about their covering up, their wallets, not about their patient. Learn from my mistakes, take someone with you, record the doctors words, research.
By now most of the world has learned that Michael Jackson died from a lethal dose given to him by a doctor, while there has been no trial yet, the logical conclusion that one can draw is that the doctor wanted to keep drawing big money so against common sense, he gave his patient something that killed him because of greed, he wanted to keep getting the gravy money.
If you still doubt that doctors, yes, even your friendly , smiling, local doc, can actually have greed on his mind more than your interest, here are some excerpts from a news investigatory show called American Greed,


The Practice
Dr. Michael Rosin has a lucrative Sarasota, Florida dermatology practice. He specializes in Mohs Surgery, a highly effective procedure for skin cancer. He performs dozens of surgeries on his Medicare patients and builds a multi-million dollar practice.
The Suspicious Patient
Ellen Murray has a history of skin cancers. She seeks help from Dr. Rosin. During a period of seven years, he continually finds more cancer and performs more surgeries. Murray becomes suspicious. She takes her biopsy slides to an outside laboratory. The results are shocking.
The Office Manager
Carolyn Ferrara suspects the worst when patients continually undergo cancer surgery... one person had 122 procedures! Ferrara joins Murray in blowing the whistle on a mild-mannered doctor and his outrageous pattern of abuse.American Greed profiles a multi-million dollar health care fraud!http://www.cnbc.com/id/27087326/
　

American Greed," a new series on CNBC, explores the worlds of scams, cons and schemes. In Episode #5, the story of a murderous Chicago doctor who bilked Medicare for more than a million
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"American Greed," a new series on CNBC, explores the worlds of scams, cons and schemes. In Case 2 of Episode #3, a doctor takes advantage of desperate patients and sticks insurance companies for millions
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And then there are the statistics

Up to a third of medical treatments are unnecessary. Estimated excess cost: $50 billion annually. -- One in eight doctors owns a health-care business to which he refers patients. His patients get more tests than do patients in general. Estimated excess cost: $140 million annually. -- Up to 40% of surgical claims are misbilled by doctors, increasing their % fees. Estimated excess cost: $6 billion annually.( the figure is actually higher now, this was an old article )
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1990/11/09/86230/index.htm

Do the world a favor, if you know of a doctor who is scamming, misbilling, over prescribing, doing unnecessary surgeries, etc, etc etc,,,, turn him in!!!!

Dr. Porter,,,, Dr. Downing,,, are you reading this??? Greed,, it is an awful thing, I may have to live blind, those responsible will have to live with guilt.

Your Doctor or Your Insurance?

Has your doctor given you the choices in caring for your eyes, or your health ? Is he considering what is best for you, or is just considering what the insurance will pay?
I have found that there were choices out there that may have helped me, they were cutting edge medicine that of course my insurance most likely would not have paid, but I wasn't even given the information, nor the choice. By the time they figured out why my vision had went from 20/40 to above 20/100 my dr,, Dr Downing ( he had offered to try to restore my sight that was lost when Dr Porter messed up my vision ) , he had offered to try to restore my sight at no cost, so that may have been on his mind when he didn't' tell me about some of the new cutting edge , one I had mentioned in an earlier article, was costly, one they are talking about now is ECT,, Encapsulated Cell Technology, has been helping people with AMD and RP.

Why are the doctors not telling us about the medicines, the procedures that will help us, only suggesting procedures that put us at risk for lost sight and then do not follow through to help us regain our eye sight?
Sure, cost is a factor for most people unless you are Donald Trump, but given the information and the choice, I could have saved a bundle that I had to spend trying to get cured of the cystoid macular edema that I developed from Dr Porters surgery, and tried to raise the rest of it for something that would have helped my sight!!! Now I am that much further behind without any benefit!!!
It seems that most of the doctors today are lining their pockets with quick supposedly easy procedures and not really taking care of the patient. Even when they are the ones who have degraded your health to begin with!!! Yes we need health care reform, sure wish we could get doctor reform along with it.

New Gene Trials for Retinitis Pigmentosa

An international team of scientists and clinicians from the United States and Saudi Arabia are working to develop gene therapy for treating a rare, hereditary retinal disease.
The therapy has been shown to restore lost vision in animal models of retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Their work is being funded in part by a $1.5 million grant from the Prince Salman Center for Disability Research in Saudi Arabia, where the recessive gene mutation that leads to the eye disease RP.

They are hoping to get clinical trials on people going maybe in early 2010!!!!

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Also,, there is reason to believe that delivering medicine to the eye for certain eye conditions, by way of a " cup " that fits over the eye , may be more helpful than drops that get diluted too much by moisture of the eye, or the shots in the eye which can cause infections, detached retinas etc,, Ah,,, yet another thing that Dr Downing should have known about , maybe he did, but was not offered to me,, for a Dr that supposedly wanted to help " fix " the sight I lost from the surgery performed by one of his doctors, he sure didn't offer me much except telling me to go get low vision aides,, Guess actually helping me was too much trouble..
Most important,, find a Dr that will actually look out for your sight!!!!!!

Update Prism Glasses for Retinitis Pigmentosa

Thought I would share some information that a person emailed me, it seems that her husband has RP, was fitted with prism glasses years ago, and they worked excellent for him.
Unfortunately, the doctor moved , etc, and there are hardly any that will take the time to do this correctly for patients.
She did tell me she had heard of 2 that did it, Doctor Nicolas Ritz in Texas and Dr Peli from Harvard. Evidently the exam to get these done right is very lengthy, couple of hours, so of course those doctors who are running surgery mills ( I think you may have heard of a couple here ) are not interested in helping us see better if it takes time and they can make the " easy " money doing unnecessary surgeries on others quickly.
Of course I believe that Dr Peli is the one who is now doing clinical trials for a special lens that will help another category of peripheral problems but hopes that it leads to helping RP patients also.
Thanks to the lady in Florida , and hopefully if anyone else had experience with these, email me, we all need to connect the dots ourselves with who are the good doctors, where they are etc.
Even with my horrible experience with eye docs who are more interested in getting rich than they are in actually helping people see, even at the expense of harming patients, I believe, I hope, I pray, that there are good, honest , caring doctors out there who will try to help people, we just need to find them, so if you know of one, let me know, I will pass it along.
Thanks to all who are passing along information.

Untangling The Truth About Bad Eye Surgery

It may seriously take years and years before I understand most of what went wrong the day I went to Downing McPeak for a routine pressure check and Dr Porter ambushed me into having surgery.
Oh there are some things that I knew immediately after having the surgery,
I knew that I went in with much better eye sight than I walked out with.
I knew that Dr Porter avoided trying to answer my questions about it.
I knew that all Dr Porter wanted to talk about was trying to get me to schedule the next surgery he wanted to do on my other eye.
I knew that there was absolutely no way that I would ever let him touch my eyes again.

But there are so many questions that I still have, like
Why would he ignore the risk , when he should have known that I was high risk?
Why, if he knew, I was high risk, why didn't he tell me?
Why did he not tell me that I didn't have to have the operation?
Why did he not send me to a retinal specialists?
What exactly went on in the surgery room?

I will never know some of it, because of course, they refuse to talk to me, better to ignore the results , better to not acknowledge mistakes.

I do know that the correct procedure would have been ,
To send me to a retinal specialist
To have treated me a week before surgery
To have treated me for months after the surgery
that may have given me a chance to avoid the CME and saved my vision.
The correct procedure would have been to inform me of the risks

I also realize now that there are things that could help me, of course, expensive things and of course they were not going to help me if it cost them a few pennies, after all, Downing and McPeak Vision centers are only knocking back 30 million bucks yearly, and, I am only one patient who will spend the rest of her life half in the dark from the lack of help .

A journal that eye surgeons read called,, Retinal Physician stated the following,,

"
Dr. Heier: My colleagues and I are about two-thirds of the way through a study of CME patients that will eventually involve 100 subjects. About 80% to 90% of them are at high risk. This demonstrates that we are successfully preventing CME in routine cases. For high-risk patients, we obviously need to take more aggressive measures.

That is why I advocate 1 week of preoperative treatment and 8 to 12 weeks of
postoperative treatment with NSAIDs

"

Of course, I didn't know that I should have 1 week of preop treatment and 3 months of post op,,,,, I wonder,, did Dr Porter and Dr Downing know it??