>>>>>News flash - every profession has a good share of those. Candidly, I've seen speakers we both know who openly advocated approaches that are definitely not in the best interests of clients.
>>>>
>>>>Actually, the book wasn't about doctors trying to make excess money from doing unnecessary tests. It was about a frame of mind that's become part of the medical mindset and training that results in too much testing.
>>>>
>>>
>>>...and why do you think the medical mindset is to test excessively?
>>
>>A combination of fear of lawsuits
>
>Definitely correct on the fear of lawsuits. Doctors have to practice defensive medicine, x100. And you have the government to thank for inculcating that mindset. The malpractice crisis was not a major issue when medicine was much closer to being private.

Beyond Bill's point, I really don't think this has anything to do with the government. It's part of a broader trend of people having to have someone to blame when something goes wrong. After all, there are more suits over all kinds of things than there used to be. In fact, I think rather than government involvement in medicine, the real factor on this side is the change that allowed lawyers to advertise. They didn't used to be, but now people are bombarded with messages that tell them that someone has to be responsible for every bad outcome.

It's also probably a consequence of the idea of informed consent, and the general movement away from the idea that the doctor is "god" and makes the decisions and tells the patient what to do. In my lifetime, doctors didn't necessarily tell cancer patients what was wrong with them, for example. Combine that change with too many arrogant doctors and you wind up with more lawsuits. (There's some pretty good research that says that when doctors apologize for bad outcomes, they're much less likely to be sued.)

Tamar