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From Men's Journal:
Every time you walk into a physician's office, you run the risk of overtreatment: Tests you don't need, medications that are ineffective (or dangerous), procedures that cause more problems than they solve. In many cases the best thing for your health is to do nothing.
Make no mistake: A good doctor is, or should be, your most trusted resource if you're sick. If you're not sick and he wants to treat you anyway, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad doctor. But it does make him a player in a system that operates according to the unspoken and often unexamined assumption that more treatment is better for the patient. It's unquestionably better for the financial health of the stakeholders in the system: the doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, the health-insurance companies, and the hospitals. If you don't know how the game is played, the odds go up that you'll wind up the loser.
What do you people think, will people change if they know this?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Buck Feta on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:01PM
One of the biggest problems with the medical system here in the USA is that providers, consumers, and payers are all divorced from the cost of service. Often I'll ask how much a test or procedure might cost, and the physician can't give me an estimate to order of magnitude. So how am I expected to make rational choices about my health care consumption if I don't know the cost? I suspect that more cost transparency in the medical and insurance system would create more elasticity of demand and bring down costs for everyone.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:20PM
I asked my US dentist about doing this vs that tooth first, and (what was I thinking?) whether it would cost less doing it under my current insurance vs new insurance after the yearly change.
The competent lady needed a few hours to get the answers. Which were wrong. Then she gave me a discount on the lowest of the two prices to apologize (still more expensive than a flight plus the same thing done in Europe).
So the system is overly complex, requires every doctor group to pay for dedicated insurance people, raising everybody's costs even before lawyers step in, and in the end they still are not sure and can make up a price on the fly.
Most doctors in France work alone in their office (though they often use a grouped system for appointments). Single payer. Limited liability. Cheap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:03PM
Won't fly in the US: no room for someone with an MBA to add value. It's funny - in "corrupt, 3rd world" systems, every exchange includes a little bribery. A little extra money for the official or worker to actually do his job. It makes everything much more expensive than it's supposed to be, but the system seems to run fine. In the US, lawyers and MBAs have legislated themselves as middlemen in most exchanges. Their fees are a lot more expensive than bribes, and they go to people who have no legitimate part in the transaction, but the system seems to run fine.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by skater on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:14PM
It was really refreshing when I took my cat to the vet and they actually discussed options and costs for his illness. Depressing as all hell, especially since we all knew he was dying, but it was also nice to hear the different options and select one that made the most sense for the cat. (Example: We were reasonably sure he had cancer, but there was no way to tell without an expensive biopsy. But his health was sliding regardless of the reason, and we knew we might extend his life a few months at most.)
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:36PM
Agree 100%. Another part of this is cost of medications.
We've recently seen the rise of cost of several medications which used to be generic and low-cost. Two that come to mind are colchicine and digoxin.