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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by brohee on Monday May 04, 2015 @10:53AM (#9486490)
Honest question : how much of the unneeded testing is CYA against ambulance chasers?
Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by clavalle on Monday May 04, 2015 @12:46PM (#9487303)
If someone compared a state with low caps on medical malpractice like Texas ($250,000), with other states that don't have such caps you could probably get a fairly straightforward answer.

I don't know how that shakes out. But I do know that various testing companies give kickbacks to doctors in the form of leasing office space from them at far above the market rate so their people can give on-premise 'consultations' on which tests need to be done. Among other abuses.

At any rate, I think the financial incentives that exist in the medical sector and how those incentives align with the patient need, desperately, to be addressed as forthrightly and quickly as possible. But there seems to be a taboo around suggesting that doctors are human and are susceptible to the influence of money as anyone else.

Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by phren0logy on Monday May 04, 2015 @11:40AM (#9486849)
I don't know why you are getting down-voted. Among doctors, this is called "defensive medicine," and there is active research about how prevalent it is.