Letters to the Editor

May 14, 2008

Writer says doctors don’t have patients’ best interests at heart

Patients, beware. Your medical doctor might be treating you not on the basis of your medical needs but on the basis of what an insurance company will allow or what the doctor’s reputation will be in the eyes of an insurance company.

My family doctor arranged for me to have a carotid artery exam. The exam showed that my right carotid artery was 90 percent blocked and in need of an operation. My family doctor arranged for the operation. In preparation for the operation a stent was placed in one of my arteries.

Prior to the operation I asked my heart doctor, who had examined me every three months for about six years following my heart bypass surgery, why he had not arranged for a carotid artery exam. To my amazement my heart doctor told me he did not do so because insurance companies do not like doctors to schedule too many exams and implied that to do so would adversely affect his relations with the insurance company.

I then asked him why he did not tell me and give me an opportunity to pay for the exam myself. My heart doctor did not respond. Apparently he was of the opinion that it was his decision to make and I did not matter.

I do not believe that my experience is an isolated case.

Michael J. Delaney Nanticoke

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