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I disagree. Doctors are frequently incompetent, don’t spend enough time with patients to understand them deeply, and are not aware of the latest research or the
by blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I disagree. Doctors are frequently incompetent, don’t spend enough time with patients to understand them deeply, and are not aware of the latest research or these nuances.
But leaving that aside, this is about patient control. Doctors should not be gatekeepers for diagnostics. I don’t even want them to be a gatekeeper for many relatively safe prescriptions, which is clearly a way to increase medical costs.
- smt88 2y ago> Doctors should not be gatekeepers for diagnostics. Doctors mostly aren't gatekeepers for risk-free diagnostics, like a blood test for a vitamin deficiency. Insurance companies are. But for risky tests, doctors have a duty to "do no harm" and can't/shouldn't order something that they know causes an increase in all-cause mortality for their patients. The concept is the same with antibiotics or anything else a patient might ask for without knowing the risks.
- ethbr1 2y ago> Doctors mostly aren't gatekeepers for risk-free diagnostics That's not entirely true. There are more than a few diagnostics in the US that the FDA explicitly discouraged companies from offering without physician referral. E.g. whole genome sequencing several years ago