Comment Re:Precisely! (Score 1) 215
Since the doctor examination is theater anyway, why not just run down the symptom checklist and guess at a prescription just like they do in doctor's offices anyway!
If this is what your doctor does, you need to find a new one.
Most of the time I have gone to the doctor when I was sick they did not bother with blood work - they just prescribed some medicine to treat my symptoms.
Perhaps your symptoms didn't warrant a blood test. There are hundreds of tests than can be ordered, they all cost money, and none of them are perfect. If someone has a cold, should blood tests be ordered? Of course not. The likelihood is that the person will get over their symptoms in a few days on their own. Ordering blood tests in this situation, on a macro level, will result in lots of false positives that lead to further work-up of non-existent problems. This leads to patient anxiety, possible iatrogenic diseases, and (even more) skyrocketing health costs.
In the few cases where they did order blood work, I was well on my own by the time the blood work came back.
Sometimes tests are negative. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have been ordered. Many other people had your symptoms, got your tests, and had a far different result.