Is American Medicine Too Test Happy?

I don't believe all tests are unnecessary but there are many that are. Recently I was in the emergency room and was charged $12,000 for sitting in a room for 5-1/2 hours and receiving a total of 20 minutes of care, that included all the time I spent with a nurse and doctor. I didn't mind having am CAT scan as it was necessary for them to determine the problem but what were the xrays for that had nothing to do with the issue at hand, don't know what all the blood tests were for...in the emergency room they do what they want and charge you regardless of the necessity of the tests and then charge you for sitting there unattended for over five hours hoping they find a problem that fits with all the tests. Personally, I don't see why anyone needs to sit in the emergency room for that long and be charged so much for nothing. Even if necessary I won't do it again - unless I have total control over what tests are done or not done.

Doctors are just covering their butts from lawsuits; but every patient has the right to reject the tests. If your doctor still insists, then switch to another doctor. My doctor only insists on necessary tests (like certain blood levels before renewing a prescription), but allows us to refuse less necessary tests. He charts that he suggested it and it was refused, so he is not liable if a related conditions results later. He also does not insist that we have follow-up appointments every 6 months. He hopes we'll come in annually, but does not require that, as long as we have the necessary blood-work for prescription renewal.

First fix lawyers' abuse of the malpractice legal system, and then unecessary medical exams will fix themselves.

Am sick of cookie-cutter doctoring! My previous doctor ALWAYS had at least two to eight tests on me prior to a visit. He then looked in a drug cos handbook to prescribe medicine. in four years, nothing worked! Am now much better due to getting prescriptions from a PA that listened to me!

It's not just cover your butt, it makes good medical sense to ensure that a patient doesn't have underlying conditions before performing an elective surgery. I have a friend who was going for knee arthroscopic surgery, and a routine EKC beforehand showed some abnormalities. Two days later, while at the hospital for more testing, she coded and almost died from heart disease that no one knew that she had. She was hospitalized and coded three more times before they were able to stabilize her on medications. If she had knee surgery without the pre-anesthetic testing, she certainly would have died during the surgery, and everyone would have been asking why no one had even checked her heart beforehand.

Malpractice...that has always been my understanding for running a whole battery of tests. Lawyers have a field day whenever something is overlooked and something goes wrong. So what do you do? Check to make sure everything is working.

We are a test-happy culture because we are a lawsuit-happy culture!! Doctors feel they have to do all these unecessary tests because if they don't, and they miss something or something goes wrong, the patient or family is going to come back and sue the pants off them. We need to fix that part of the system before we can address the over-testing issue. I don't blame the docs for doing that one bit- I would do the same thing. It's called CYA.

I have also heard the reason the doctors are so test-happy is because they have no idea how much these tests costs. And many will "accidentally" bill for things (like epidurals during birth that the patient never received) and the insurance will pay for it anyway - one mom complained about it and the insurance company just shrugged it off and paid for it anyway. If you multiply that by a couple hundred, thousand? who knows- births, that is a lot of money. The cesarean is the most common surgery performed in the US, and the c-section rate is 33 percent. You can't tell me that all of those are completely necessary.

Happens entirely too often. I was the recipient of a bunch of testing done for the sole purpose of CYA, not because the tests were indicated or necessary. PS: I spent 45 years working in healthcare, so I know CYA when I see it.

Everyone has their bogeyman for the root of waste in healthcare expense. The underlying problem however, is that when you receive medical treatment you may be the patient, but you are not the customer: your insurance company (or Medicare/Medicaid etc.) is. In other words, someone else is footing the bill.

As long as that is the case, and as long as you are willing to spend someone else’s money differently from how you’d spend your own, we will never fix the problem. For example, would YOU opt for that expensive MRI scan to rule out a break, when your doc says it is most probably just a sprain – if it cost YOU $2000? Would you opt for the $100,000 cancer treatment that has a 5% chance of extending your life for another six months – if YOU (or your surviving heirs) had to pay the tab? Answer “no” to these kinds of questions and you are part of the problem.

I had arthoscopic surgey and my physician didn't require a chest x-ray but the hospital billed me anyway. I caught it becauase it was the only thing my insurance didn't fully pay.

This is why national healthcare will not work in this country. Because this type of medical model is way too expensive and we're already prone to abuse, both from patients and doctors. Sometimes the 'old way' is better - but we are so far gone from that idea (treating patients conservatively, and paying attention to them as individuals) that we can probably never come back from it, because if patients don't feel that their doctor is doing everything under the sun, they stomp their feet and complain and then call the ambulance. The flip side of that is that doctors treat every minor thing like an accident waiting to happen - like the chicken pox vaccine, which is now mandatory. Since when did chicken pox become a "disease?" When you're filling your pockets with pharmaceutical $$ you just start drinking the KoolAid, unfortunately.

Too many test is NOT why health care costs are absurdly high. It is simply because so many people don't have insurance now and they get treated anyway. Their expenses are routinely shifted onto the bills of the paying customers. Why that is acceptable, I don't know. But it illustrates why a mandate to carry health insurance in necessary.

"American Medicine" is designed to keep you sick or kill you, nothing more. Just ask the doctors and researchers that have actually cured cancer and HIV only to have their houses firebombed and their families threatened. You now have to go to exotic places for these cures.

americas health care is way too much under the control of the big pill companies who give back to doctors who prescribe their wares and the power they have in the congress and senate here in america is extremely crimminal else where in the world when something is discovered that can benifit the human race it is adopted many yeaqrs faster so the citizens of that country can reap the benefits but here in america it is another story too ,any people haave their hands into the health system here and money is the reason not good health or care

Blame FOR PROFIT insurance companies.

That's just silly. A simple blood test only costs about $100 and can diagnose many possible diseases. What's problematic is when a doctor sends a patient home and they get very sick because the insurance company pays a doctor to not test and not diagnose, but instead to save money so the insurance company can give out bonuses to its executives.

People who are not medically educated should not judge what is medically necessary. Not all docs practice defensive medicine, but the vast majority want the best for their patients, and not all are money hungry. Fed up with docs always being made out to be the bad guy. With all the paperwork and red tape it takes sometimes just to get a test approved by an insurance company , believe me, you have to love taking care of people to continue practicing medicine especially in the primary care arena. It is easy to say a test is unnecessary after the test was done and was normal, but if you were the person whose life was saved because you had that preoperative ekg and they found out you had heart disease before your little knee surgery , and you didnt have a heart attack on the surgical table , you might think different.