Ep. 3 - Why current healthcare is not good enough for you Rethink Medicine with Dr. Habib

Dr. Habib talks about why the current healthcare system is not good enough for you. 
 
Transcript below:
Hi this is Dr. Habib. Today I want to try to go over what determines whether a doctor discusses blood pressure versus arthritis versus cholesterol on any given office visit. So first, some of the logistics, and then I'll delve into the medial aspects, and finally, hopefully the way it should be done. So you may imagine that the doctor's very smart. He's figured out which is the most important criteria for that office visit. And what I want to tell you is that let's look at what is involved in that decision making. Number one, the duration of the visit. So if you have a physical, it's a long visit, minimum 30 minutes. It could go long as an hour. Just depends on the doctor, really. It's beyond what depends on the doctor. If he wants to get reimbursed, he has to spend about 45 minutes, go over certain points to be able to check off, in order to call it a physical for reimbursement purposes. So it's really not about what he wants to do and how much time he wants. He's being driven by what reimbursement he's looking for. So physical is a complicated, or annual physical, so based on the fact that it's gonna be more detailed, a longer process, then it should warrant more time. But for the average visit, it's about 15 minutes. My joke is and it's not really a joke, 'cause it's a serious joke, it's five minutes to check in with the receptionist and your insurances and all that paperwork. And it's probably about a few more minutes with the medical assistant checking the blood pressure, the height, the weight, and then you get about five minutes with the doctor. And a few more minutes to check out again. So that 15, 20 minutes was literally only five minutes with the doctor. And that's not a joke. That's kind of unfortunately the reality. And in that short period, let's just say, that short period of time, that office visit, how did that doctor figure out whether we should talk about the blood pressure today, the cholesterol today, the acid reflux, the joint pain, the rash, how did he figure that out? Well, like I tell you, if somebody came in with an acute problem, it's different. Your shortness of breath. That could be mild, but we're trained to look at all the possibilities, so even though it may seem simple, we should be prepared for a long visit because it could be a pneumonia. It could be a pulmonary emboli. It could be a chronic obstructive lung disease. It could be asthma. It could be a inflammation, a pneumonitis. The point I'm saying is that, that for acute problems, it's variable, but things like blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, these are very stable, and so the doctor's already pre-programmed himself to know, I'm only going to spend 15 minutes, of which you know it's not really 15 minutes, on cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes. And so the myth is, you would imagine that the doctor had figured out which is the priority, and I'm gonna at the end of this video, dispel that. Dismiss that concept. And what I want you to understand is that, he is going to be discussing a subject matter with a duration of time that's gonna match the reimbursement, so he's actually practicing under the parameters, of what the insurance reimbursement. That means diagnostic codes, procedure codes, reimbursement. And not because of what he deems is the most important thing. So let's use some examples. Cholesterol's pretty benign. You have to have cholesterol for a long time, where there is any association with cardiovascular problems. Blood pressure, same thing. The fact is that you could have blood pressure for one week, one month, six months, one year, no acute problem will happen. In fact, we know it takes decades for the blood vessels to get stiffened up before the heart starts to get bigger. And so I'm not condoning waiting a decade without treating it. All I'm saying is that there are certain things that need more of a pri