As an example of how frustrating it is: to get treatment covered by a US insurer for some infections (like, say, Lyme) you usually have to have two different t

As an example of how frustrating it is: to get treatment covered by a US insurer for some infections (like, say, Lyme) you usually have to have two different tests that both have positive results, in a specific order. You have to test positive on an initial, fairly inaccurate test...and then you have to follow that result with a positive test on a [relatively] more thorough and accurate test. But some of these (patented) tests are based on just a single species of the organism. (There are a couple hundred species of Borrelia, IIRC, which is the spirochete family that causes Lyme. So, if you don't happen to have that 1 in 2XX species of bacteria, then you will likely not test positive in the exact way they want you to in order to 'earn' treatment.) And the longer you've been infected and the more serious your symptoms, the less likely you are to test positive because your antibody response diminishes over time. "You can't just skip ahead to the more accurate and thorough test now, silly, that's cheating." (?!) If you have a regional strain of bacteria that isn't recognized as a cause of 'Lyme', like 'STARI', then you're probably just out of luck completely. The tests were not even intended for this diagnostic purpose by the CDC, but they are being used that way by insurance companies in order to exclude people from treatment. The tests are meant to be used for statistical tracking purposes only. Oh, and some of the people that are fighting long-term treatment and the development and acceptance of new tests are the very people that hold the patents on the existing tests. There are already more accurate tests available, but insurance companies will simply not accept them.