It definitely helps as a patient to advocate, and add anything that a physician like myself maybe wouldn't always ask, like if you've been a tick-infested area and/or discovered a tick attached to yourself recently.
Looks like Labcorp made over 3 billion dollars last year, so I think probably that number would go up instead of collapsing?
It is true - you can’t test every patient for everything. There is an estimated 1B primary care visits in the US each year. Assume every patient get 5 tests at $50 a test and you just spent a quarter of a trillion just on tests.
The frustrating part for me is when people think of the symptom as the cause. Like they understand that multiple things can cause a fever, but they don't understand that multiple things can cause bronchitis.
When I was a kid I had "sinusitis" multiple times a year, but my doctor never explained to me that it could be the same or different causes. When I learned that '-itis' just meant inflammation, it blew my mind. I have done my best to spread that knowledge ever since.
Here’s one paper on the topic I remember reading at the time: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8791801/
I have noticed that the line between condition and cause is often overlooked, even by doctors. For example this leads to people thinking Pinkeye/conjunctivitis is highly contagious, when it is still conjunctivitis if it is caused by getting something in your eye. I think that holds for everything that ends in -itis too Sinusitis, Arthritis, Tendonitis, etc.
I know that is a bit of a tangent, but you reminded me of someone who had bell's palsy telling me that it was actually shingles. I explained that just because it was caused by shingles doesn't mean it stops being Bell's Palsy, just like how it is still a cough if it's from the flu or from smoking. They ended up getting really angry at me about it, but I think hn might appreciate the semantics a bit more.