Get bit by a rattlesnake, ouch. Go to the hospital, get bill, OUCH!

[MDT]

There is scientific data.
It does work. Doctors &/or hospitals just dont use this because it isnt a medical treatment, its a scientific treatment, & they want to make the money.
Ive seen it & know several people who have done this & the pain from the bite or sting was relieved within minutes. No ill or lasting side effects except some pain from the actual shock, which is temporary, as long as you dont have a heart condition or a pacemaker.
A Van de Graaff generator will do the same on a smaller scale. I have done this myself with wasp stings. Within 1 min of touching the generator, the pain & throbing from the sting was gone.

ok...not gonna argue w you. if you get bit, hook yourself up green mile and let the juice flow. i am a doctor...trust me, i don't get paid any more or less if i shock you or give you drugs..i have been treating snake bites and studying envenomation for well over 15 yrs...i know the literature...trust me. this is what i love about the internet. some whack-job puts out there Field and Stream he lights himself up with a stun gun after a spider bite and some missionary dr in south america says "hey, i shocked some natives after they got bit and they got better"..so it must work....and people believe it.

geez, this is the jenny mccarthy anti-vax stuff of toxiclogy.

 

[somarsmi]

ok...not gonna argue w you. if you get bit, hook yourself up green mile and let the juice flow. i am a doctor...trust me, i don't get paid any more or less if i shock you or give you drugs..i have been treating snake bites and studying envenomation for well over 15 yrs...i know the literature...trust me. this is what i love about the internet. some whack-job puts out there Field and Stream he lights himself up with a stun gun after a spider bite and some missionary dr in south america says "hey, i shocked some natives after they got bit and they got better"..so it must work....and people believe it.

geez, this is the jenny mccarthy anti-vax stuff of toxiclogy.

LOL, my wife would get a kick out of the Jenny Mccarthy comment. She dislikes her and her book of non sense very much.

 

[tntrex]

Way cheaper here than that pic you posted. Is this bs ?

 

[SoonerP226]

The bills are definitely negotiable.

Heck, in some ways, the bills are a negotiation. Just look at the huge insurance write-downs when you get the itemized statement for services covered by insurance. It's like they're playing the old "we'll mark it up 100%, then give them 33% off and they'll think they're getting a deal" game. And if you're feeling particularly masochistic, try to make all the random numbers they put on the bill add up to the bottom line...

 

[dennishoddy]

Its my understanding, that hospitals charge these high expenses to cover those that come in with no insurance, and can't pay.

At the end of the year, they have losses to claim.

 

[HiredHand]

Its my understanding, that hospitals charge these high expenses to cover those that come in with no insurance, and can't pay.

At the end of the year, they have losses to claim.

Or they receive state and federal subsidies to cover the cost of providing care to the uninsured.

 

[tRidiot]

Or they receive state and federal subsidies to cover the cost of providing care to the uninsured.

Which come out to total a fraction of the care they provide for free.




Here's the thing about your (not HH, the other guy) electric shock therapy for spider, insect and snake bites - in THEORY it may have some merit... using electricity to denature the proteins of some proteolytic venoms from poisonous creatures and plants sounds good in theory. You use the electricity to shock and change the shape of the proteins, thereby rendering them inactive and stopping their ability to cause damage. Although, like chemotherapy, you have to kill off the bad while not killing the good. How do you do that with your method? How do you judge and know when, where and how long to apply your therapy and how much to use? You measure in volts? In volts per second? There's a lot more to a medical therapy than just "guesstimating" when people's lives are on the line - but from the cheap seats, it's easy to fling poo with the other monkeys. However, as mentioned above, your own accounts of this (similar to a couple of instances I have personally witnessed) are not considered the standard of medical care - the standard by which we are judged in a court of law. You don't like that? Change it. Lobby for it.

Here's what we need, MrT. So get a pencil and write it down, get to work on it, ok?

1. Elimination of the "standard of care" as a basis for medical malpractice lawsuits. Easy-peasy, right? Allow doctors to perform unproven procedures on patients, even on an emergency basis, essentially conducting experiments in uncontrolled conditions, without approval or consent - don't give people a "choice" between the standard expensive therapy that is proven, and the one they feel might be a plausible alternative. I mean, who's gonna choose the "plausible alternative" when it's their life or limb on the line, right? Especially when we tell them they can get the proven, effective, yet expensive therapy anyways, cost no object, and deal with the financial consequences later.

2. Change patient expectations of cure. I mean, let's get real, people come to doctors to get fixed. To be helped. We need to changed to expectations and mentality of the patient population to revert to feel more like they're gambling here - with their lives. We need to get them to understand that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. And they may be one of the eggs, so... if you drop an egg or three on the floor, well, there's always a couple of extra dozen in the fridge.

3. Change administrative policy to allow experimentation and medical "free spirits" in a hospital setting. We're gonna open our arms to those free thinkers who wanna rub tar on your abscesses, use emu oil to treat your muscular dystrophy, and eliminate the calcification of your coronary arteries by driving down your dietary calcium to restrict it's deposition in other tissue, right?


You see where I'm coming from?

If you think the doctors providing your treatment for conditions such as you describe are actively limiting their own options in treatment so they can "milk" the patient for more money, I'd have to seriously question your understanding of, and exposure to, the real on-the-ground medical system in this country. As in day-to-day, in the trenches, pulling people's asses out of the fire of their own apathy and stupidity.

The things listed above are an AT-MINIMUM start to get the treatments you want initiated. As a physician, I made ZERO extra money from that little girl getting charged $10,000/vial for the CroFab I gave her. Zero. But... if I had skimped on it, worried about the cost in a life-or-limb-saving emergency and not even tried something different (like you're suggesting), but even just dialed back a bit on the recommended 4-6 vials for initial treatment and given the minimum of 4, of that girl had a bad outcome, lost a limb, died or even just lost some functionality in the limb - guys like JB would be lined up around the block to file suit against me. Period. Point black. End of story. No question. If you don't believe that, then I wouldn't question your experience in the system, I'd flat out say you have no understanding of the current climate.


I don't give a single treatment for any medical condition (not ONE! not EVER!) based on the fact that it is more complicated and generates more revenue for anyone. Not one. Not EVER in my life or career. NEVER. If that's not clear enough for you, then there's nothing that will convince you anyways, because you've made up your mind and any further attempts to educate you are a waste of my valuable (to me) time.

 

[snipes]

what we need is some pics of Jenny Mac!

 

[Fyrtwuck]

what we need is some pics of Jenny Mac!

She was in Playboy several times. Shouldn't be too hard to find. Probably easiest to look in the Spata files.

 

[twoguns?]

Geez, just go to a county hosp
They're kinda slow, but that's because they're free


ha