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Friday, November 21, 2014

One Reason Why Sickcare Is Outrageously Expensive: Needless Scans/Tests

Add easy profits from needless tests to defensive medicine and no cost controls or real competition, and we have the perfect formula for waste, fraud, profiteering, bad medicine and dysfunctional, unaffordable healthcare.

Why is sickcare (a.k.a. "healthcare") absurdly unaffordable in America? There are many structural reasons which I have covered in depth for years, but one that most of us can relate to from personal experience is needless, hyper-costly scans and tests.

Even those of us who have never had a CT or MRI scan (and I hope I never will) know the drill from friends and family: practically every injury is now scanned by one device or another at enormous expense--not for treatment, as M.D. Ishabaka explains, but as defensive medicine to ward off future lawsuits or in response to patient demands.

Ishabaka (M.D.) walks us through the maze of CT and MRI by using his own injuries and treatments as examples of how our system has become unaffordable and ineffective.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think a lot of patients also tell their doctor what test they want. They have heard that this test will diagnose that problem and they want the best, quickest solution to their problem. Of course, not thinking about how much it will cost.