Eli5: Why aren’t health care systems in US built to avoid financial bias from the provider? Eg, it can be quite dangerous for a dentist upselling to make a buck which could end up causing more damage down the line. Pharmacists verify prescriptions for Dr, but why is there nothing for procedures?
Comments
Because you would be limiting For-Profit business’s ability to charge market rates for their services.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Just capitalism.
Because the people in charge of the healthcare system have a financial bias towards keeping financial bias in the healthcare system remains legal and the norm.
But as an individual you are free to get 2nd opinions from different doctors…if you have the money to do so.
Ugh this reminds me I need to switch my dentist, I feel they are trying to charge as much as possible and when it comes to actual dental work I feel like a car stopping in for a pitstop at a NASCAR race
Two issues. First is, healthcare providers typically bill for each service so there’s an incentive to have more services.
The second one, I think you’d have to ask a medical malpractice lawyer to be sure, but I suspect it comes down to a common cognitive bias that acting is better than not acting.
A while back, there was a study on malaria treatments in resource limited settings, and they found that giving patients an IV fluid made them sicker. I remember going to a seminar where one of the authors presented the findings, and they had a *heck* of a time getting the ethics board to even approve the randomized control trial with no IV fluids- so “obvious” was it that IV fluids would help. While in more resourced settings IV fluids would be normal, so were a lot of tools that were not available. So it probably felt to the people on the ethics board like the study was trying to force lack of basic healthcare on poor people in a clinical trial. I think about that study a lot, because there can be a lot of harm done by doctors with the best of intentions simply trying to do something rather than doing nothing.
They sort of are. Insurance companies are incentivized to not approve treatments, so they take a skeptical eye towards approving things they deem unnecessary.
Because we had to outlaw these things in specific the things. It used to be that doctors would invent, make, and sell their own medicine and that was outlawed because it was causing bad outcomes.