[noonespecial]

My condolences. But as someone whose father lost a kidney and suffered much un-needed anxiety and pain because of a false positive on one of those "extra tests" (and the general culture of treat-until-lawsuit-proof), I humbly request we meet in the middle.

[Retric]

The middle would trade X deaths for X case of pain and wasteful spending which is not a fair trade.

Trading 5-100 of your fathers cases for 1 life is IMO a worthwhile trade as we want a system heavily biased toward savings extra lives.

PS: It's the rate of false positives vs saved lives that cause wasted treatments not the number of tests.

[DanBC]

You're making the mistake of thinking that over-testing, over-diagnosis, and over-treatment saves lives, when it probably doesn't, and may well decrease length of life as well as quality of life.

The US has massive rates of testing for various stuff. It also has a lower life-expectancy than other similar nations.

[Retric]

US life expectancy rate relates to poor healthcare and poor public health more than over testing. When you let a large chunk of the population die from treatable illnesses it's hard to make up for that by treating a subset even better than average.

The US homeless population for example is 1.56 million people and they don't get good healthcare.

[DanBC]

The simple message is that over testing causes harm and does not reduce all cause mortality.

[Retric]

That's the message some groups are sending. But, many people have an incentive to save money by reducing testing even it costs many people their lives.

So their exists some cases of over testing, but under testing is also common and a huge risk.

[noonespecial]

How 'bout 1000. 10000? Now were just arguing numbers. Don't forget the opportunity cost of unneeded treatments using resources that could have "saved" others as well.

We're taking many paths but ending up at some sort of rationing in the end. There's no easy answers.

[Retric]

I doubt they would have removed a liver if the risks where that low.

So, really it's saving lives at the cost of a fixed but low number of false positives and a lot of wasted tests not a 10,000 extra removed livers per life saved.