[caycep]

It depends on the culture...I think medical culture differs from place to place. When I was in the northeast, everyone had the ambition of being the next Michael DeBakey or chief of Harvard Medical School, so we'd all run every single test under the sun. The patient'd get a huge bill later from the lab because the insurance didn't want to pay, but what the hey, we were all medical residents and didn't have to deal with the fallout (the primary cares probably did and were pissed).

Out here in the west...people will roll in with some obvious diagnosis and some overworked urgent care doc seeing 60 patients a day wouldn't have bothered to ordered even the most basic tests....