So it seems reasonable that insurers are concerned with the reasonableness and necessity of care. On the other hand, as a society, we face a serious ethical and moral dilemma when we attempt to ration health care with the chief purpose of saving money. Certainly, it makes no sense to spend tens of thousands of dollars on transplant operations or other heroic measures for the terminally ill, as is currently the practice. But treatment terminations for whiplash patients are much less black and white. Care cutting methods based strictly on dogmatically inspired calendar mileposts, and which pay no true regard to the patient's current subjective and objective findings, and disregard the relative risk factors present which might increase the need for extended care, fail not only all logical arguments, but cause us to question the wisdom and perhaps also the motivations of health care reform.
All whiplash injuries resolve within eight weeks and require no further medical care.
This patient has had a whiplash injury. This patient requires no further care because more than eight weeks have evolved. However, there is no evidence that either modification of premise one is true. If these insurance companies and their experts are interested in operating on a purely science-based foundation, providing the appropriate literature to them should allow them to develop a more reasonable and meaningful method of analyzing the need for ongoing care. If they prefer to retain their dogmatic myth-based foundation, we can only assume then that their motives are primarily inspired by the corporate bottom line.