Comment Re:Pathetic (Score 2, Insightful) 223
We could do with doctors having some end of live training. I have watched too many elderly relatives treated with expensive and painful procedures that only managed to lengthen their suffering a very short amount of time. Often increasing their suffering for that time. Yeah, lets try chemo on an 85 year old who is more cancer than man! What the hell is wrong with these doctors?
It's the same reason you get an XRay every time you go into the Dentist. You don't need them (visual inspection will tell almost everything you need to know), but they are a very simple and easy procedure that will get the dentist a good amount of money from the Insurance company. In addition, like mechanics and the specialist equipment they have to buy, paying off that XRay machine they are forced to buy will probably take a few thousand XRays, so they have to do it in order to survive.
A lot of the medical decisions we make in this country are satisfied by this basic economic pressure: The exact point where they can bleed as much money from the Insurance companies (who bleed as much out of you).
This is why we should have went with single payer or Universal health care in the United States, instead of using the Affordable Care Act to prop up a diseased industry. Perhaps in another 10-20 years we'll be at that point in the US, it depends on how fast the current Ultraconservative Party collapses.