The simple answer is to fee-for-service medicine instead of the current insurance system, and this is where we’re headed, for better or worse. Diagnostics are b

The simple answer is to fee-for-service medicine instead of the current insurance system, and this is where we’re headed, for better or worse. Diagnostics are becoming an order of magnitude cheaper than a doctor visit, and people will get them illegally if they have to. If they know the Bayes probability, and they bear the cost of further test and treatment, they are equipped to make the right decision. Doctors can’t tell you the Bayes probability because it’s conditional on a hunch and a complaint. Mostly the services they provide are trivial, useless, uninformed, systematically biased, and subject to ulterior motives. They are useful only for maladies that have no cheap and accurate diagnostic, which is probably the bulk of medicine in the long tail, but it’s clearly not their primary focus in most cases.