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Originally Posted by golfing eagles
IMHO, the amount of fraud is in the tens of billions. Insurance companies adding diagnoses is fraud, same for hospitals and doctors.
"Unnecessary" tests are not fraud , and are driven by one thing and one thing only-----LAWYERS
It is estimated that the defensive practice of medicine costs us $600-700 BILLION/year. Want to cut costs?-----limit so called "pain and suffering" awards and penalize lawyers that bring frivolous lawsuits. There is real malpractice from unqualified or impaired providers, but that is a small fraction of what is going on---the majority of lawsuits are for "maloccurence"---a bad outcome through no fault of the provider.
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This an area of abuse, that folks on the receiving end of medicine, don't think about. We all know that once you're on Medicare, your health care providers can't wait to do more & more tests, and once you're "in the system", you'll be bombarded with tests and procedures they want to schedule.
The risk of malpractice lawsuits, is a daunting cloud that apparently hangs over the medical profession. In Massachusetts, it's almost impossible to sue for malpractice. In order to actually get anywhere with a lawsuit, the action has to be "validated" by a review board and the bar is fairly high.
I had a doctor who wildly misdiagnose an issue and like most everyone else, I was ready to sue. I talked to 3 fairly big time Malpractice attorneys, who all told me, I would be wasting my time.
I suspect other states don't have such barriers to malpractice claims and folks can sue for "maloccurance" or delayed care, due to misdiagnoses?