I don’t recall exactly what the letters said when they mailed me the container for my poop, but my impression is that they don’t wanna give me a colonoscopy if my poop passes tests.
I’ve relayed this unrelated health care test thing before, but a friend of mine had a mild heart attack when he was about 62 years old. His arteries and whatever were clogged like nobody’s business and he had open-heart surgery even though it’s kind of rare nowadays because the blockages were so extensive. He most likely didn’t notice any symptoms because he was in otherwise great shape. He had had exams and no sign of trouble. He climbed Mt. Whitney every year. But, he was basically at extreme risk to drop dead any second.
He told me that his doctor told him that the only way to detect the blockages would have been the test where they put a camera up in your heart and they don’t do that unless you have some indication that you need it. He said his doctor told him that people of his age should just lie and say they have chest pain to get the test.
Agree. To be fair, no one is completely confident that 1K is actually his cost.
EV calculations on preventive care could be it’s own thread. But if insurance companies only paid for screening when it was +EV for them, I think the outcomes would probably not be as desirable as one might imagine.
Meh, I’ll let CN chime in here but my understanding is it isn’t just a financial analysis. Those tests have their own risks associated with them, especially as you get older. Colonoscopies for example aren’t even recommended past a certain age (I think 70) because the risk/benefit analysis changes. This isn’t to say that many doctors don’t overtest to cover themselves even when the risk/benefit analysis says they shouldn’t.
At this point I’m just looking at the cost estimate on their website. I did get there after being logged in, but the cost estimator may not have used my age. Dunno. Maybe I’ll ask about this when I ask about the flu shot.
It’s not a camera. They stick a wire into your groin, thread it up to your coronary arteries, shoot some dye and take some x-rays. Called an angiogram.
His doctor is super duper wrong about this. Over the past 10 or so years it’s become quite clear that we do this procedure far too often with little to no benefit. There’s real risks with this procedure too.
obv your friends situation is different as he had a heart attack.
jmann- hard to tell but I’m guessing the estimate of cost is wrong, which is why I’d tell mb to ask someone irl.
If someone told me that with a clear poop screening (and I have no history of this kind of cancer or really any cancer that I can think of in my family) that a colonoscopy is not warranted, they’d be telling me what I want to hear.
I don’t have time to go down the rabbit hole on this to confrm, but IIRC, the stool tests should be done annually in conjunction with colonoscopy every 10 years. So I think you should be doing both.
You’d think they’d text me about it. They aren’t shy about texting me to get a flu shot. This thought had me checking and my last text from Kaiser about the booster and it was:
you did NOT receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, you DO NOT need a booster at this time.
Flu shot is easy because mostly everyone needs to get one once a year.
Colonoscopy is only certain age groups and then only if you haven’t had one in the last 10 years. And what if you had one somewhere other than Kaiser? It much less trivial to blast out a mass text that targets the right folks for that.
They know how old I am though and texting is cheap. They seem to know I got Moderna even though I didn’t get it at Kaiser. I went to one of those big vaccination sites.
Seems like a pretty logical assumption though that I’d get my colonoscopy at Kaiser since it’s so expensive - at least without insurance. Though, that does make me think that maybe I could go to Mexico for one.
I was thinking about people who had different insurance and then switched to Kaiser.
But I guess they could send out a text to everyone who has been at Kaiser for 10+ years and has no record of colonoscopy and meets age requirements. They would miss people but everyone who does get a text would likely need one.
I’m about to get a screening colonoscopy and I haven’t the foggiest idea what it will cost. Looked at Anthem’s website and I can see some information that says it will cost me $0, but I betcha it’s more than that!
