[jhardy54]

There's a big difference when you take informed consent into account.

When I go to the doctor I understand the scope and goals of my healthcare provider. I'm not surprised when my behaviors are changed to enhance my health.

When the average person uses social media to connect with friends they aren't informed on the scope or goals of the social media provider. When I RSVP to a birthday party I only expect that my response will be sent -- I don't expect that I'll have birthday gifts suggested to me or have my relationships tracked by surveillance organizations.

[kenjackson]

> When I go to the doctor I understand the scope and goals of my healthcare provider.

Are you sure about that? The fact that I have to sometimes argue for a test, and their counter argument isn't "the test isn't useful or even worse", but rather "the test is expensive" makes me wonder what their goal is. I'm paying for the test (or my insurance is), aren't I? It seems they're trying to optimize for something, but I'm not sure if its my health.

[nradov]

Physicians have an ethical obligation not to order unnecessary treatments, especially those that could cause iatrogenic harm. That applies regardless of who is paying. Most tests produce some level of false positives, which can potentially lead to more unnecessary treatments.

From an evidence-based medicine standpoint, how likely are those tests to actually optimize your health?

[kenjackson]

In this case the doctor explicitly said it was to reduce costs, although the other test is preferable from a diagnosis perspective. Like I mentioned previously, if the reason the doctor gave was that the more expensive test was also less useful or had other negative consequences I didn't think of, then I'd appreciate that. To simply rule out the more expensive test based on cost seemed at ends with what I wanted - again as insurance was paying the tab.

[jhardy54]

You should ask your doctor! I don't have enough information to give you a confident guess, but my intuition is that theyre trying to save you money when an expensive test is unlikely to be helpful.

Many people struggle to make ends meet, so it makes sense to avoid superfluous medical costs. If you tell your healthcare provider that money is no object I'd imagine that they'd be able to weigh the financial aspect more accurately.