Enough with the tests already

If I ask my doctor for a test, he will almost always grant my request. He will also ship me off to a specialist if it looks like I have something spooky. Now this is what family dcotors are trained to do.

When I go to a specialist this begins a whole new relationship, mostly involving "I'd like to see you again in six months."

The last time I went to see such a specialist, I said, "Look, I"m not going to sue you. Don't practice defensive medicine with me. I like you, but I'd rather not ever come back here again.

I've calculated that there's about a 75 percent overlap between physical therapy and yoga -- meaning that yoga, which is not covered by insurance, is good enough for most of my aches and pains.

These are some of the reasons our healthcare system is so screwed up. Despite its thousands of pages, Obamacare has nothing to say about doctors' liiability. Most doctors aren't trained in nutrition or exercise or yoga or any of the wellness things. They are trained to spot symptoms and order a drug, a specialist or surgery. Marcus Welby is long dead.

All of this also pushes up costs, which Obamacare intends to deal with by denying you certain types of care. Some bureaucrats in Washington are going to make those decisions. Bad as your insurance company is in saying no, imagine that coming from some committee in Washington.

Today comes yet another example of our current system at work.

Doctors in urology groups that profit from tests for prostate cancer order more of them than doctors who send samples to independent laboratories, according to a study in the journal Health Affairs. 

The study found that doctors' practices that do their own lab work bill the federal Medicare program for analyzing 72% more prostate tissue samples per biopsy while detecting fewer cases of cancer than counterparts who send specimens to outside labs. 

Hiring pathologists boosts revenue for a practice and creates a potential incentive to increase the number of tests ordered, said Jean Mitchell, a Georgetown University economist and author of the study.

Given how many urologists want to biopsy my prostate, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a) they don't want to get sued, and b) they may be trying to pay for some expensive biopsy equipment they've bought.