Words Of Wisdom said:
That is very interesting. I would have guessed the opposite actually.
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It can actually be worse than Viper1's example too ...
While paying hundreds of dollars to "Treat" people in the emergency room for non-emergency cases (or even nothing) is bad, its not that bad because it wasn't really that expensive and the patients are not worse off from the treatment.
Chronic back pain is one of the most common reasons why people visit a doctor and it is most often caused because of stress, muscle fatigue (often from an improper work environment), and a muscle-strenght imbalance (often from poor fitness). Back when the only diagonistic tool was the X-Ray doctors would look at the X-Ray see nothing physically wrong with the spine, give patients stretches/excercises and possibly give them a prescription for a mild pain-killer ... Today, with the MRI and what not, it is not uncommon for similar patients to have something "unusual" show up on a diagnostic test and get surgery performed on them even though nothing was wrong ... and in many cases their surgery results in them having worse back-pain even though the surgery was "successful"
When you're spending $10,000 to $20,000 to give paitents a worse result something is wrong.
