Category: Medical Scams
-
Why Your Pediatrician Isn’t Calling Out Every Parenting Scam
Every few months, a new “urgent” problem in your child suddenly needs fixing. Flat head? Helmet. Bowed legs? Braces. Tongue tie? Surgery. Mild variation of normal human anatomy? Congratulations, there’s a billable solution for that too. And naturally, parents start to wonder: Why isn’t my pediatrician warning me about this? Oh, they have opinions. Strong…
-
The Fast and the Furious-ly Unnecessary: Ear Tube Edition
Ear tubes are, without question, one of the great success stories of pediatric medicine when used correctly. They are also, without much question at all, one of the most reflexively over-prescribed surgeries a child can undergo. Insertion of tympanostomy tubes is the single most common reason a child in the United States goes under general…
-
7 Out of 8 Tonsillectomies Are a Waste — Is Your Kid’s One of Them?
Nothing says “modern medicine” quite like removing a perfectly innocent piece of lymphoid tissue from a five-year-old because they had a sore throat twice last winter. Tonsillectomy is one of the most common surgeries performed on American children — more than 500,000 a year at its peak, still hundreds of thousands annually today — and…
-
So You Want to Put Your Kid on Lifetime Wegovy Instead of Teaching Him to Eat a Vegetable
Let me set the scene. A parent walks into my office, sits down, and says, “Doc, Timmy had two cookies at the birthday party. Should we start him on a GLP-1?” I want to be clear up front: I am not anti-medicine. I am not anti-science. I went to medical school specifically so I could…
-
Craniosynostosis, The More Serious Cause of Flat Heads, And a DOC Helmet Won’t Fix It Either
Every few days a parent shows up in my office holding their phone up like it’s a search warrant, already zoomed in on a photo of the back of their baby’s head. “It’s flat,” they announce, as if flatness were a diagnosis instead of a description. And look — sometimes it is flat. Babies are…
-
The Breast Pump Industrial Complex: Milk, Money, and Mayhem
Somewhere along the way, breastfeeding—an elegantly simple biologic process—got upgraded into a full-blown production.Now it involves cords, flanges, storage bags, apps, schedules, freezer inventories, and just enough anxiety to qualify as a part-time job. Progress?And at the center of it all? The modern breast pump. A device that is occasionally very useful… and increasingly treated…
-
Concierge Pediatrics: A Membership Fee For a Benefit You Already Have
Somewhere in America right now, a pediatric practice is running a Facebook ad promising “guaranteed same-day sick visits” and “unhurried, VIP access to your child’s doctor” for the low, low price of $250 a month, per child. Do the math on that and you land somewhere between $1,800 and $13,800 a year depending on your…