Health Care Mini-rant from Stephanie

We're celebrating the first anniversary of Sophie's heart surgery. Yeah!!

We had a visit with the GI doctor this week with mixed results. She's actually lost a little weight from our last visit. This is probably attributable both to being sick and to an easing on the calorie intake based on the doctor's recommendation. She's getting taller though, so we know she's getting enough nutrition. The doctor has recommended another endoscopy and I guess we'll do it. Sophie's emesis issues haven't really changed in the last 5 months. Since she started on the medications, she's held a steady average of 1-2 throw-ups per day. This is an improvement, but still not great. There may be an allergy not previously discovered that we could be managing if we knew about it. That's what the endoscopy will tell us. The endoscopy she had done last October was negative for allergies. Other than that, the doctor doesn't have any recommendations.

I doubt she has an allergy since the first doctor put her on a super hypo-allergenic diet when she was tiny as a first attempt to treat the problem. I guess the national health care debate has made me even more skeptical about such things. Since the doctor will make significantly more money from doing this procedure than from just putting brain power into office visits every three months, is it possible for him to be objective in this recommendation? Of course, we've already met our deductible, so this will be free to us. These are some messed up incentives on both sides. It's no wonder the current system is a disaster. My economics training is kicking in. Can you say "market failure"?