WHAT THE INSURANCE COMPANIES DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW 

 ABOUT DENTAL INSURANCE

BY SAM MOORE

I have not been able to take care of my teeth like I should because of my Parkinson's disease.  As a result, I had to make a visit to a dentist.   Knowing that I needed work done on my teeth, I added dental insurance to my health plan with Alignment Ins.
When I had my appointment, I discovered I needed $40,000 of work done.  I ask the dentist what it would cost if  I didn't have insurance.  The answer was double or $80.000.  With a few additional questions, I found that the insurance cut the cost to me by  50%.  That on the surface seems like a terrible burden on the insurance company.  The question I had was, how does the insurance company stay in business?   I ask that question of the dentist.  The response was, don't worry  about the insurance company, they negotiate a rate with the dentist.   This smells bad, somebody is taking a beating.

Guess what,  it is the patient.     I don't know where the fraud lies, but I know somebody is profiting from the situation.   Pinning the blame is going to be difficult.  I have come up with two quiet different scenarios leading to the situation.

The first, lays the blame on the dentist.  I don't believe this is the case.  The second, places the blame, I believe, on the rightful place, the Insurance industry.   In the first scenario, the dentist's conspire to boost the price of their services by a factor of two.  They then clue the insurance companies into the idea of selling an insurance plan.   They convince the public that the insurance is paying for the  service, leaving a significant copay for the patient..  What is really happening is, the Insurance company negotiates a price for the services, individually, with each dentist.

In the second case, the most probable,  the insurance industry, either, cons, or pressures the dentists into increasing their prices.  The insurance company, then "negotiates" the prices of the services.  As a  result, the insurance co. can say they are insuring the patient when actually they are selling a discount card at no cost to themselves.   Check it out, you can get a discount card for free that allows you to get 50% off on your dental services.

I believe greed allows this fraud to continue,  It appears, the insurance industry is the profitee in the fraud.  The dentists go along with the situation because in the worst case they get a fair return for their services, and in the best case they get double the price from the unsuspecting  "uninsured". There are still some conscientious dentist, who have kept their prices at a reasonable level.  They don't get the insurance business because there is no room for price negotiation.

       RYTARY THE KNEW "GOLD STANDARD" IN PARKINSON'S DISEASE TREATMENT
                                                                   BY SAM MOORE


A knew "Gold Standard" in PD treatment is now on the scene and is proving itself.  It is called Rytary, Ry-tar'-y..  I have just started using it so don't have any personal experience yet..  Without the price tag, it would quickly take over the  number one place in PD treatment.  The predecessor,  Sinemet  would  soon be history.
With my engineering background, I need an understandable, development history of any product I endorse.   Without the actual history,  I am compelled to invent my own.   Fortunately, I have a tool that gives  me under the skin insight into the interaction of medications with different absorption characteristics..   The tool is a medication profile plotter.   By entering the dosages and dose schedule of a day's medication protocol, I receive a plot of the days' medication blood concentration.  With this information,  I can reconstruct the thought processes and hard work that went into the development of Rytary.
Rytary is a progression of Extended Release, ER, and Control Release, CR,  Sinemet.  The advantage of ER/CR Sinemet is added therapeutic time.  A plot of the blood concentration, following doses of ER/CR Sinemet, is shown in figure one.

The advantages of this  configuration over IR Sinemet is obvious.  The disadvantage is the absorption time,  it takes too  long for the initial dose to take effect. I remember reading somewhere that Rytary uses a combination of IR and two versions of ER/CR. The developer of Rytary must have taken considerable time and research to come up with the combination of Sinemet versions  they settled on.   The  combination I arrived at in my analysis, 16.7% IR,  33.3% ER/CR 3 hour and 66.7% ER/CR 5 hour.
I have a friend who uses Rytary.  She takes two capsules  of 95 mg. Rytary 4 times a day.  This gives her 24 hour coverage of therapeutic medication.  This profile is shown in figure two.

Using the profile plotter, I would select  10 mgs. IR and 180 mgs. 5 hour.  The 24 hour plot is shown in  figure 3.  The addition of the 3 hour ER/CR does not appear to be of any real advantage.

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For a trial use of the plotter contact Sam Moore at sdurwoodm@gmail.com.  Thirty day trial is free, Donations are accepted.  The plotter was developed to study Sinemet, and requires EXCEL, which is not included.

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