The High Cost of Medical Care for Low Back Pain
Friday, July 1, 2011 at 12:26AM | tagged cost of medical care, how to meckenzie exercise, idaho falls, low back pain, lower back pain, mckenzie exercises, mckenzie press-up, physician Share Article | Email Article No surprises here. A recent study found that people with back pain inevitably spend more in terms of health care costs than those without.
Researchers found that patients with back pain end up spending about $7,000 annually on health care, while people without back pain spend about $4,000 a year.
Now it is true that insurers and third-party payors end up picking up a lot of this cost. Even if you are just paying copays and deductibles, though, this still adds up to a lot (not to mention societal costs and the burden of lost work/productivity).
On this note of cost, a patient mentioned today in the office to me that a local chiropractor wanted her to sign up on a payment plan for spinal decompression (DRX-9000 I think) treatments. He told her it was only going to be $9,000 (all out of pocket because insurance companies won't pay for this treatment). That's more than my car costs. Yikes.
Maybe we should stick with exercise Rx for back pain. If nothing else it's cheaper than some of the alternatives.
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