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I Now Have a Cardiologist

joecieplinski.com

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Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#61

Post by 1000units »

milemi wrote: post #59
itissid wrote: post #27

While this is great for Afib detection it's its very rare CDC says 2.7-6 Million people[1]. Still great for those people! I still think we need to do much better. High BP and hypertension is way more important to measure since they can be diagnostic in a larger percentage. My dad is a triple bypass heart patient. ECG and stress tests did diddly squat to detect it, until it was too late and it was diagnosed by a CT An…

Do you know how many sieverts you get each time? I had one of those and I think I got one year's worth of background radiation in those few seconds that it lasted.

A lot of people get blasted with obsene amounts of ionizing radiation so the insurance pool can save a few bucks over an MRI. Disgusting.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#62

Post by risaacs99 »

goshx wrote: post #53
risaacs99 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the negativity struck me as well. After being in Afib for a month, he was at high risk for having a stroke. I guarantee you that insurance would have been appreciated then. Just to add to the discussion, I've been self employed and on ACA plans for several years now (with my family). I'm grateful to have the option, and it's miles ahead of what we had prior to the ACA.

It seems to me that only people who were born in the US "appreciate" paying this much money for health insurance and see someone criticizing it as being negative. The whole health system in the US is horrible. Nobody should need to go through a middle-man (a.k.a. insurance) in the first place. No wonder prices for everything are absurdly high. Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of…

I don't disagree. I would love the option in the US for everyone to have basic health care through medicare or a public option insurance plan (with prices starting at zero).

My point was to compare it to pre ACA. Our system improved significantly when the ACA was passed.

Now, if you're sharing the cost of a treatment with someone, they're always going to have a say in the treatment you get, unfortunately.

That's true under any system.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#63

Post by xs83 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enough that he is always paying down the deductible. Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down? He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but…

I honestly find this baffling that there is a "limit" on how much treatment you can have done based on an arbitrary $ cost.

Australia generally has great "free" healthcare but even then it is complicated with rebates and gaps etc, its not completely "free" but there isn't exactly a limit on what you can have done under Medicare. If you have private medical insurance (an option not a requirement) then you can get a nicer hospital and not pay for the extra requirements.

In the UK you just get fixed and never see a bill in your life - everyones tax pays for it. Again not exactly "free" but you don't "pay" for it. Again, if you have private you can get a better hospital, choose your doctor etc.

The way I see it the US could 'have its cake and eat it' but there is significant opposition to anything that seems "Socialist" because the moguls who run these private health insurance companies are making too much money to change the system.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#64

Post by milemi »

maxgee wrote: post #8

> resting heart rate being in the 113-120 bpm That seems insanely high

Yeah, my dad died of a heart attack at a relatively young age, and I've been paranoid about my cardiovascular health ever since. Half an hour of that HR at rest and I'd be off to the ER.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#66

Post by avemg »

pubby wrote: post #16
maxgee wrote: post #8

> resting heart rate being in the 113-120 bpm That seems insanely high

That's what a-fib is: unusual rapid heart rhythm.

No, that's not quite what it is. You can have an unusually rapid, but regular (i.e. normal sinus) rhythm and that's called tachycardia. During tachycardia, the electrical impulses that control the muscles of your heart fire in the correct sequence, intensity, and spacing between impulses, they just go through a cycle much more quickly. If you looked at an ECG and measured the distances between the peaks and valleys, they'd be at consistent distances, just really close.

During a-fib, the electrical impulses are all off. The peaks and valleys are irregularly spaced and the amplitudes vary from cycle to cycle. This usually results in a rapid heart rate as a second order effect because, due to the "misfiring" not enough blood is pumping through and your heart is working harder to make up for the difference.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#67

Post by skizm »

One thing to note: portable ECGs are <$100 on amazon. Not as feature rich as the apple watch, sure, but the watch only measures from one location, normally you want to measure from a few, usually at least 3: leg, arm, and chest.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#68

Post by nradov »

1000units wrote: post #61
milemi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how many sieverts you get each time? I had one of those and I think I got one year's worth of background radiation in those few seconds that it lasted.

A lot of people get blasted with obsene amounts of ionizing radiation so the insurance pool can save a few bucks over an MRI. Disgusting.

It's not necessarily a cost issue. CT scanners have higher spacial resolution for angiography.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#70

Post by mach5 »

skizm wrote: post #67

One thing to note: portable ECGs are <$100 on amazon. Not as feature rich as the apple watch, sure, but the watch only measures from one location, normally you want to measure from a few, usually at least 3: leg, arm, and chest.

the watch measures from two locations actually, through the wrist and through a finger on the crown. you're still right that 3 (and more) is better.
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