Why Do We Run To Doctors For Everything? Because We Can.

My husband and I are approaching the time of life when the statistics say people our age start to see doctors more often. My question is: Why? Why do we -- why does anyone -- rush to see a doctor for every little ache, pain and sniffle? Here's why: because we can. We treat health insurance as a medical care plan instead of treating it as insurance against catastrophic illness. We think that because health insurance will "cover" something -- and that we pay hefty premiums for that coverage -- we therefore have the right to see a doctor for whatever ails us. We take a "better safe than sorry" attitude toward every small body creak and rush to the doctor "just to be sure." This attitude is actually dangerous: Medical errors were ranked as the #3 cause of death (killing 250,000 Americans a year), according to researchers at Johns Hopkins.  But far more likely than killing us by mistake is that many a doctor's visit is just unnecessary -- and becomes unnecessarily expensive: When a patient comes in complaining of symptoms, doctors feel an obligation to "fix" them. After all, if the patient was bothered enough to come in, there must be something wrong, right? And what generally follows is a series of multiple (expensive) medical tests to, if not determine the underlying cause of the problem, at least rule out the serious conditions it could be but likely isn't.   I am as guilty of this as the next person. I ran to the doctor's last week to have the wax...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news