DEAR SUN SPOTS: I am hoping that someone has a good old-fashioned home remedy to remove plantar warts on the foot. I can’t afford the cost of the doctor. — No name, Farmington.

ANSWER: Sun Spots recommends speaking to a medical professional about health concerns. Most insurance providers have a 24-hour nurse hotline for questions just like these. If you do not have insurance or are otherwise struggling financially, you may have another option. Maine Law requires that free care must be provided to Maine residents with income less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Check with your preferred local hospital, practice or clinic to see what free or income-based care they are able to provide.

As far as home remedies, according to the Mayo Clinic, many people have removed warts with:

• Peeling medicine (salicylic acid). Nonprescription wart removal products are available as a patch or liquid. Usually, you’re instructed to wash the site, soak it for up to 20 minutes, gently remove dead tissue with a pumice stone or emery board, and apply the solution or patch. Patches are usually changed every 48 hours. Liquid applications are generally used twice a day. You may not see results for several weeks;
• Freezing medicine (cryotherapy). Nonprescription medicines that freeze the wart include Compound W Freeze Off or Dr. Scholl’s Freeze Away; and
• Duct tape. You use this by covering the wart with silver duct tape for six days, soaking the wart in water, gently removing dead tissue with a pumice stone or emery board, and then leaving the wart exposed for about 12 hours. You repeat the process until the wart is gone.

According to the article, study results have been mixed on the effectiveness of duct tape in removing warts, either alone or with other therapies. More information from the Mayo Clinic about plantar warts can be found at tinyurl.com/jprxygn.

DEAR SUN SPOTS: Does a doctor get any money for the prescriptions that they write? — No name, Rumford.

ANSWER: It’s illegal for pharmaceutical companies to give kickbacks to a doctor to prescribe drugs, but it is legal for those companies to give money to doctors to help promote a drug. According to ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit, investigative newsroom, some doctors make tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year beyond their normal practice, just for working with the industry. You can read more about their investigation and stay up-to-date on conflicts of interest in the medical field at propublica.org/series/dollars-for-docs.

ProPublica has a handy tool called Dollars for Docs, found at projects.propublica.org/docdollars, that allows you to search any doctor and see how much money they have made from promoting different pharmaceuticals or medical devices. A similar tool is available at openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.

This payment information is made available through the Sunshine Act, a provision of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that promotes transparency in the industry. Information from Dollars for Docs and Open Payments is available through the year 2015. Updates to this tool will certainly depend on current legislation.

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