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Today’s post is not so much about health but about personal injury case, arbitration and insurance company which does not wish to compensate injured patient after he was involved in a car accident. I had an opportunity to present the case for one of my patients against insurance company which is not willing to compensate him for pain and suffering post motor vehicle accident. Besides my patient and me, the plaintiff attorney was in the room and neurologist who helped to manage the care when the pain level was unbearable for my patient. On the other side was a defense attorney and defense orthopedist (insurance company is using this orthopedist deliberately for reporting purposes only – about this later). The last person was a gentleman who was in the middle of this madness – the Arbitrator.

The arbitration process is not as serious as a deposition or a trial for personal injury cases. The process began by cross examining the patient from defense and plaintiff sides. I was not allowed to be present in the room during this process. The second cross examination was for a neurologist who was co managing the care for this patient. Again I was not allowed to be present in the room during this process. I was a third person to be crossed examined by both sides. Plaintiff attorney began asking me questions about pre and post health condition of this particular patient. The main complaint of the patient was persistent lower back pain which radiated down his left lower extremity. The questions were very specific and were leading to a specific conclusion – that this particular injured individual has never had shooting lower back pain prior to this accident. My thorough documentation has proved that this was the case. When the time came for a defense attorney to cross examine me, that person completely relied on an orthopedist’s report, which was obviously geared towards the benefit of the insurance company. The problem is that the defense orthopedist spent perhaps at the most thirty minutes with this patient and can not possibly know everything about his health history. Some anecdotal studies and examples were included in the report which had no supportive values for defense attorney and insurance company. Orthopedist does not have much of a clinical experience and is specializing in report writing only. This doctor was called for cross examination right after me.

The third party has wasted thousands of dollars on defense work instead of simply compensating the injured person. I am pretty sure that arbitrator will award this man a proper compensation for his pain and suffering.

As the number of orthopedic surgeons in the USA is growing so is the number of back surgeries performed on patients with back pain. Often time it is a 50/50 chance that patient will be pain free after a surgical procedure due to the soft tissue fibrosis and lack of proper post surgical rehabilitation. Did you know that over 100,000 people die each year in this country from surgery complications. This number by far exceeds the number of automobile accidents in the entire country. The ratio is 23 percent for men and 32 percent for women.

It is not the secret that the health care system in this country is the most expensive in the world. Thus all U.S. citizens must get the best educated doctors who in theory would make the healthiest nation in the world and would provide the best medical care available. World Health Organization stated that as of 2000 the U.S. ranked #1 in cost, #72 in population health, #37 in health care delivery with 48 million Americans uninsured. France is ranked as #4, #4 and #1 and only 1% uninsured. The question is why French get more medical care for their money than we are?

TIME Magazine stated that U.S. spends more to get less then any other industrialized country in the world. Why such a waste of resources? This country spent twice as much on a sick-care as it did on food in 2006 and more than China’s 1.3 billion citizens consumed altogether. Wow, we can feed countries like India and China for the whole year.

President Barack Obama stated: “Today, we are spending over 2 trillion a year on health care – almost 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation. And yet, for all this spending, more of our citizens are uninsured; the quality of our care is often lower; and we aren’t any healthier. In fact, citizens in some countries that spend less than we do are actually living longer than we do.”

According to Forbes Magazine Back Pain cost over $40 billion for treatment alone. If we include disability, work loss and other factors the total cost would range somewhere between $100-200 billion per year. That is quite a large amount of money. Most of the countries do not even produce this much. About 3 million people went to Hospital E.R. for lower back pain which cost $9.5 billion. Low Back Pain is the number nine most expensive condition treated in U.S. Hospitals. If people could only maintain their bodies the way they maintain their vehicles things would be different. Regular Chiropractic care could prevent biomechanical vertebral misalignments and therefore save an individual from unnecessary expensive surgical procedure.

Pran Manga, PhD. MPhil health economist stated: “ There is an overwhelming body of evidence indicating that chiropractic therapy of lower back pain is more cost-effective than medical management.” Many other studies proved that chiropractic manipulation for none specific low back pain is far more effective than other forms of treatments. Millions of patients are satisfied with the results that they are getting with chiropractic care. Watch several video testimonials on this blog. Only 42 out of 131 military treatment facilities have access to a chiropractic care due to the medical bureaucracy within the Department of Defense.