Jul
11
2011
Do you really need that?
0Do you really need that?
A thousand years ago, consulting a doctor about abdominal pains would have earned you a week in bed, covered with leeches, while a shaman sprayed chicken blood all over your torso. These days it seems to most of us that medical science has advanced a little since then.
Well, we hate to break it to you, but many of the common procedures in use today are about as useful, if not more dangerous, than that bucket of leeches from ages past.
Your Yearly Physical
The yearly physical is by far the most common reason people go to the doctor. He looks, he feels, you take a deep breath, he listens. Maybe he takes some blood. Then you get out of there with another year of health in front of you. They're probably the most known and accepted staple of Western medicine, with 64 million of them performed per year.
So..what's the problem?
Can you guess who gets the yearly physical?
Routine physical examinations first caught on in the 1920s, when it was discovered that people who got yearly exams tended to live longer.
Unfortunately, this is a classic case of confusing correlation with causation. The kinds of people who like to keep up-to-date with their physical exams are the same kinds of people who focus on keeping a healthier lifestyle in general.
As it turns out, physical exams provide no real benefit if you don't have any actual symptoms of anything, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Most of the time, you'll know that there's something wrong with you long before a doctor can detect it by cupping your balls.
Still, the physical exam is the bread and butter of the medical industry. Depending on your personal level of hypochondria, you can sign up for anything from a $5,000 Executive Special to your regular $120 McCheckup. All secure a steady income for doctors, and all are almost entirely pointless.
But just because it doesn't do any good, that doesn't mean it does any harm, right?
Well, first of all, the pricier examinations will usually involve plenty of those cancer-inducing CT scans. But then let's say that they do come back showing something suspicious. This leads to more expensive and invasive tests that often show that there was nothing wrong to begin with. The human body is actually full of things that look like tumors on a scan result, but if none of them are growing tentacles and slithering around your arteries, investigating every one of them just subjects you to unnecessary scalpel-stabbing.
Then again, what if the tests come back negative? Isn't the peace of mind worth it? Again, not so much. Apparently, this lulls people into a false sense of security, and they walk away feeling totally healthy. As we've pointed out, tons of terrible diseases can't be detected until they become symptomatic. But when symptoms of an actual disease do show up, people who get physicals are less likely to get these symptoms checked out because they got a "clean bill of health".
Yet doctors keep doing them, often just to get us to shut up. They say that it's usually quicker to just run some tests than to take the time to explain why they're not necessary. Insurers, in turn, cover them only because we want them. And all these quick bucks add up to over $7 billion per year.
So.. why is healthcare so expensive?
0 Comments | Perm-a-link | 7/11/2011
