^^^^^ Oh yeah, that is the TRUTH! The surgeon who did my Vaser lipo (which I'm thrilled with!) just wrote about this very topic in his most recent blog. It's something we don't give much thought about, but when you're sitting in the chair at the office of a doc or specialist you have faith in, it's DAMN easy to be sold on a procedure.

That is exactly how I got myself into the MixTo pickle last May. For ONE YEAR, that doc (my ex-facial surgeon and ex-injector) kept telling me about the miracle of MixTo - why, it would peel 15 years off my face's age. Yeah, along with the skin and my sanity.

My recommendation to ANYONE going to any doctor these days is: be prepared with a comeback for the upsell pitch. We can't stop the docs from suggesting it, but you can have a ready comeback on hand to shut them up.

Try this line: My house is underwater, I have zero savings, and you're lucky I scraped together the money for this app't with you today. Cuz I was afraid my payment check would bounce.

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I Bug U

Another one to try is to see IF the doctor would do it without having you sign a disclaimer acknowledging the risks. Like say, 'Ooo--that sounds great. I'd love something like that as long as it had no risks' or say; 'I'm willing to try it if you feel confident enough to do it without my signing a risk disclaimer'. That will also stop them from trying to sell it to you.

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Can hardly walk. Need hip replacement.

Via taking a BET on "alternative information".
Here, clearly you had some alternative information that you were willing to explore first.
You invested $90 to 'test' your alternative info at the 'risk' you 'could be wrong and the doctor was 'right' and you lucked out by winning the bet.

Although you probably did not articulate the steps you went through in your decision not to accept the doctor's assessment as 'gospel', intuitively here is what you did:

On some level, even though subliminal, you must have asked yourself: 'Am I willing to BET that this doctor is right?', 'If I do BET on him and he is wrong, then I lose.' You probably also noticed that he WINS whether or not he is right or wrong. So it's a thing where HE WINS IF you bet on him whether or not he's right or wrong (which you don't know for sure at the time of betting on him.) You realize, on some level, that there is a RISK to you if he is wrong and ask yourself if you want to take that risk.

Then you ask yourself another question which is: 'Hey, since I'm the one needing to take any risk, what if I just take a risk on this botox shot instead?' You lose MUCH LESS by taking that risk even if the botox did not work.

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Can hardly walk. Need hip replacement.

I was looking at pics of myself tonight from 9 years ago and cannot believe how much younger I looked then. It was just 4 years ago that I went for my first PS consult and shortly afterwards had a face and brow lift, along with lower lid resurfacing. The face and brow lifts did not do what I needed and the resurfacing left me with malar mounds. A doctor did the up sell on me. He convinced me that I needed things that I did not need. I now know that I needed more volume to my face, lots more.

Five years before my face lift (9 years ago from now), my face was fuller and it is amazing how much younger I looked! I've always had a thin face but to see these pictures I see just how full my face was. This doctor sold me on a face lift and all he did was stretch my skin and yank up my brows over bone that had lost facial fat. All in all, it did not improve my face just made it look tighter--not more youthful...hell, not even more rested now that I look back at those pics.

If you ask me, the only real way to know a doctor is not up selling is to get a professional analysis from someone who stands to gain nothing from whether or not you have PS done. I know I won't have anything major ever done again without getting an analysis from Miss J.

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DCNGA has left the board and is no longer taking PMs.
She requests that if you wish to e-mail her to use her direct e-mail address which is: laserandiplsupport@gmail.com

Brow lift to lower your brows?

Doctors get set fees from insurance providers per procedure.

This is really a question for sam. I know Residents are paid by the hospital.

LOL!

How doctors are paid depends on the type of hospital they work at. At a university hospital many of the attendings will be tenure track with a salary. Alternatively they can be clinical faculty and have their own practice but also practice and get paid by the hospital. At a private hospital, until recently the doctors were not paid by the hospital, but rather had private practices in or outside the hospital where they were in a salaried group, usually with productivity incentives, or solo.
More reently many doctors practices are owned by private hospitals and hospitalists, or doctors who only take care of inpatients, are paid by the hospital.
Stache, you're right that an insurance company sets the rate for a covered expense. Doctors who don't take insurance can charge what ever they want.