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Posted by Alex Lickerman  Print  Email to a friend  Photo: Thomas Beck Photo In two previous posts, A Prescription For The Health Care Crisis and Analysis Of The Health Care Law, I attempted to analyze the major cause of America’s skyrocketing health care costs and why I was skeptical that the new health care law would do much to curtail it. In this post, I’d like to offer some concrete ideas about what I think needs to change to slow the rate of rise of our nation’s health care bill. While I’m certainly no expert in health care policy or economics, I have had extensive experience as both a health care provider and administrator and would like to get a conversation going in this forum that addresses the most significant cause of our inflated costs. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: gustaffo89 I had a patient once—a fellow physician—who came to see me complaining of mid-back pain. When I examined him, I found I could reproduce his pain by pressing firmly on the spot he said was hurting him. He said pressing there also made the pain radiate around to his stomach, a phenomenon known as “referred pain” that meant his pain was almost certainly caused by a trigger point. I offered to inject it with a mixture of lidocaine and cortisone, a procedure that’s been shown in the medical literature to be helpful, but he declined, preferring instead to use over-the-counter pain relievers. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: zilupe I had a patient once who wanted an exercise stress test even though he had neither symptoms nor risk factors to suggest the presence of coronary artery disease (such as chest pain with exertion). I argued vociferously against it. However, extenuating circumstances (not relevant here) prompted our mutual decision to go ahead with it anyway. To our surprise and dismay, it came back positive. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: David Paul Ohmer Sickness, in Buddhism, is considered one of the four inescapable sufferings of life. I’ve described some of my own misadventures with it in a previous post, Overcoming The Fear Of Death, in which I faced two potentially life-threatening problems. I recovered from both completely without any residual or long-lasting harm to my health, but recently a far less serious illness has, ironically, been able to challenge my self-concept as a healthy person far more than did my almost dying.
Months ago, I developed a mild pain in my right knee. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: oddsock I’ve had one panic attack in my life. It happened when I was a first-year medical student and taking my first biochemistry mid-term exam. Everyone agreed that all our teacher’s lectures had been virtually incomprehensible. And unlike most of my classmates, who’d majored in biochemistry or biology in college, I’d majored in English, so the material was almost all entirely new to me. I remember opening the test, reading the first question, and thinking I had no idea what it was even asking. So I turned the page to the second question—only to find myself equally at a loss. I read all seven questions in turn, each time thinking that I’d be able to answer the next one, until I reached the last one and realized I couldn’t answer any of them. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Americans spend an astounding thirty-four billion dollars on alternative medicine annually. Given that so many of us put our faith in alternative care, I wanted to clear up some common misconceptions about it to help people make wiser choices when and if they turn to it. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: OliBac I saw a patient the other week who complained of intolerable hot flashes for the last several months. They were happening day and night, often awakening her from sleep, and after a series of questions, I realized they were significantly interfering with the quality of her life. So I suggested she begin hormone-replacement therapy.
“What about the increased risk of breast cancer?” she asked, alarmed. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: kevindooley We humans are often distinguished from other animals by our ability to make and use tools. We got things rolling with the wheel and haven’t stopped since. Now we have supercranes to build skyscrapers, cars and airplanes to move us from here to there, and screwdrivers to put things together. The problem we find isn’t a lack of tools; it’s that we often use the wrong tool or no tool at all and end up struggling far more than necessary to accomplish the task at hand. When obstacles seem insurmountable or just harder to slog through than we think they should be, often the problem is simply that we’re using the wrong tool. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: Steve Snodgrass First aid is defined as the immediate care given to an acutely injured or ill person. It can literally be life-saving so it behooves all of us to know some basic principles. What follows are some rules that cover common conditions and general practices: Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Photo: scubadive67 WARNING: The time required to read this post will violate my five-minute rule—by a wide margin. This isn’t so much to punish readers for my decision to read all 1,163 pages of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (HR3590) and all 337 pages of the “Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010″ (HR4872)—known collectively as the health care law—but rather because a shorter post couldn’t possibly do an analysis of it justice (not that a longer post will either, but here goes…). Continue reading…
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