Medical Curiosities

Is it my imagination, or are the months really flying by this year? Yikes! It’s graduation time for one of our granddaughters; she’s moving on to high school next year. High school? How did that happen?

On the subject of ‘medical curiosities’, I decided to try acupuncture for pain relief. Acupuncture is no longer on the fringe of health services; MD’s do it but Medicare doesn’t touch it and that means you have to pay the whole bill. So you still have some ‘pain’ to deal with.

Anyway; back to the needles…since the physician doing the acupuncture was a member of the same medical group we use, there was no need for a lengthy repeating of symptoms and history and she quickly had about 14 needles stuck in my back and legs. And I only felt one going in! After that brief bit of excitement, it’s pretty boring after that. You lay there for about an hour while a TENS unit sends a mild current through some of the needles. Then the needles are easily and painlessly removed and you’re free to go. And in my case, with less pain. Now I don’t know if it was the acupuncture or the fact that I hadn’t been moving about for an hour that had reduced the pain. But I am going with the acupuncture. That’s my gut feeling. No, I’m not pain free, but I am more mobile and I’m coming back for another visit next week.

And more medical…we had a call from a friend who was rounding up volunteers with deep pockets. It seems that a local physician would be glad to distribute the Shingles vaccine to 10 people. At $200 per pop. She had secured 5 people so far. Zostavax, made by Merck, is a real moneymaker and no insurance is paying for it. So what is insurance for? Well, we know that in its present form, it helps the bottom line of the insurance companies. And to help all the parties become richer, the vaccine is recommended for all over the age of 60. And although it’s said that Medicare Part D will reimburse for the cost of the drug but not the physician, insurance companies are still studying their options and keeping their wallets closed.

As best I can tell, there are 44 million eligible elders and only 2.5 million doses of the vaccine. And there are approximately 1 million cases a year and of that million, about 500,000 are over 60. I guess that means it affects about 1.4% of the elder population… more or less. But, from what I’ve read, you don’t want to come down with Shingles! Did I mention the kicker? The vaccine is only effective for 51% of those vaccinated. Gotta do the math!