In this era of politicized health care, a study by medical specialists finds “many profitable tests and procedures are performed unnecessarily and may harm patients. By some estimates, unnecessary treatment constitutes one-third of medical spending in the United States.”
Their list of overused lab work includes X-rays, brain imaging and bone scans that are not needed when they are ordered.
Future lists by other specialists are forthcoming, but all this is only the tip of the health care fraud-and-abuse iceberg.
Any reasonably alert patient in recent years has a personal list of providers who specialize more in billing than healing: dermatologists who nick off a small cyst and charge Medicare for surgery; podiatrists who inflate five minutes of nail-paring into hundreds of dollars; physical therapists who put clients on an exercise machine and walk away to file insurance claims.
Five years ago, the FBI estimated “phony bills” and “excessive treatments” to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion dollars a year and climbing and, now as Congress and the Court try to nullify Obamacare, who knows how much the tab for free-market cheating may be.
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