Dr Burgess Tuscon

Reform Will Lead to Work Avoidance by Doctors, AAPS Told Congress

Patients and physicians are the people you don't find on the complex organizational charts describing ObamaCare, stated Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS www.aapsonline.org ), which sponsored the briefing.

Americans were promised that the ACA would save money and reduce the federal deficit. Dr. Burgess warned, however, that "entitlements are a raging fire, and the ACA is a gasoline tanker fixing to dump its contents on the fire." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R5f5JhgfcM

The cost explosion will not be translated into more patient care, the doctors explained. ACA may create much higher demand by increasing the number of insured patients, and mandates to cover "preventive" services for the healthy, but who will do the work of caring for the sick?

The new "accountable care organizations" (ACOs), like the managed care organizations they resemble, are supposed to contain costs by changing the incentives. Instead of fee for service (more pay for more work), doctors will be paid more for treating by the numbers, and keeping numbers like blood pressure within a certain range. From personal experience, Dr. Burgess described the pressures that managed care and government agencies put on physicians to limit care.

The costly, onerous regulations in the ACA will also drive more and more physicians out of independent practice and into salaried positions. Dr. Amerling predicts that once physicians become salaried hospital employees, they will revert to the nearly universal work-avoidance behavior of physicians in training, who receive the same meager salary no matter how many patients they see. The most obvious manifestation is "turfing"—attempting to have a new admission or difficult patient directed to someone else's service.

"Fee for service has been wrongly blamed for runaway health spending," Dr. Amerling said, "when the real culprit is the third party system, unrestrained by meaningful co-pays or deductibles." Fee for service is necessary to ensure that patients are treated promptly. http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/obamacare_and_loss_of_the_fee-for-service_payment_model_-_statement_by_rich

The U.S. single payer system called the VA also discourages hard work. "Doctors can often provide the best care for their patients only by violating the rules," Dr. Orient said.

Pet Health Care Unleashed - The New Southwest

“Here’s a wonder dog right here,” says Dr. Randy Aronson, VMD, veterinarian and practice owner of P.A.W.S. (Partners in Animal Wellness Services), an integrative veterinary center in Tucson. RJ sniffs his greetings. “This guy at one point couldn’t get up,” Aronson says.

According to Chinese Medicine, blockages to the body’s natural flow of energy (chi) are the cause of disease. Acupuncture, which is the insertion of needles into specific meridian points or pathways of energy in the body, removes blockages and stimulates the inherent flow of wellbeing again. It has helped animals as well as humans experience relief from pain, digestive disorders, respiratory problems, and musculoskeletal disorders.

“Once you get the needles in, most animals just settle and lay down or they sit quietly,” says Dr. Holly Burgess, DVM, a holistic veterinarian at Sunrise Pet Clinic in Tucson.

It was acupuncture for her German Shepherd, Megan, that inspired Burgess to become a holistic, integrative vet in the first place.

For those unfamiliar, holistic is an approach to health care that considers the whole animal – body, mind, and spirit.

Integrative refers to the kind of treatment that combines the science of conventional medicine with the benefits of alternative therapies, such as nutritional therapy, chiropractics, physical rehabilitation therapies.

Instead of treating symptoms, holistic/integrative veterinarians diagnose and treat the underlying causes of an illness or condition. They evaluate the unique physical, behavioral and environmental factors affecting each animal. Preventative and proactive, they look to the most natural, least invasive therapies to sustain or repair health before considering surgery or pharmaceuticals.

Burgess was at a loss on how to treat Megan’s lifelong allergies and digestive disorders. They only worsened with age. By the time she was 8, back pain debilitated her too.

A conventional veterinarian at the time, Burgess recalls thinking, “I’ve got to do something different.”

“Hokey” is what she thought as she watched a veterinarian place a small acupuncture needle into one of Megan’s meridian points. “This is for digestion,” the doctor told her.

But after every treatment, Megan, who never liked to eat much, would run to her bowl and gobble up her food. “I thought, ‘Wow, there’s something to this,’” Burgess said.

Burgess ended up taking a six-month course from the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society. There she met veterinarians knowledgeable about a whole new world full of healing modalities for animals. Chiropractics, allergy clearing, acupuncture. And nutritional response testing, which became her passion, for animals and humans.

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