Today's Courier-Journal had an opinion piece submitted by the President of the Kentucky Medical Association regarding tort reform measures in the state that are needed - Liability reform needed to stop junk lawsuits.
However, an interesting contrast to the KMA's concerns about the courts is an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on doctors being the THIRD leading cause of death in this county. See, eg., Doctors May Be Third Leading Cause of Death . KMA's sound bytes that junk lawsuits increase medical costs fall on deaf ears of many and hardly explains the deaths due to doctors. Part 2 of the series was entitled: Drugs & Doctors May be Leading Cause of Death.
Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year
This week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the best article I have ever seen written in the published literature documenting the tragedy of the traditional medical paradigm.
This information is a followup of the Institute of Medicine report which hit the papers in December of last year, but the data was hard to reference as it was not in peer-reviewed journal. Now it is published in JAMA which is the most widely circulated medical periodical in the world.
The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she describes how the US health care system may contribute to poor health.
ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:
- 12,000 — unnecessary surgery 8
- 7,000 — medication errors in hospitals 9
- 20,000 — other errors in hospitals 10
- 80,000 — infections in hospitals 10
- 106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs 2
- These total to 250,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!
What does the word iatrogenic mean? This term is defined as induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment.
Click here for rest of story summarizing the costs of the medical profession.
Comments