[greenglass]

Could having doctors refuse to run diagnostics also lead to anxiety? It has for me personally but I may not be the typical patient. Some people want zero information about medical issues. They just want to leave all of it to the doctors, no desire to research their condition or understand the details; just trust the doc. I am the sort of person if my mechanic tells me I need an expensive repair, I want to know why. Once I had a dr tell me that I was wrong to feel less anxiety after getting an abnormal brain scan, than I would have felt had I not had the scan at all. It was an absurd conversation and very clear to me that the dr was more invested in his opinion on the matter than he was in listening to my reasons why the scan was reassuring to me. It was an mri, so no radiation. But he insisted that my anxiety would be worse having had the scan than if I hadn’t. A bizarre moment. Anyway, maybe doctors sometimes get too stuck on their own opinions and don’t fully appreciate that there are more than one type of patient? Some people like to change their own oil, some do not. Doctors may also underrate the anxiety of having no clear diagnosis when life changing problems occur. One size fits all mentality is probably wrong.

[n8henrie]

Did you offer to pay for the MRI cash (roughly $5k I would bet)?

Because to me this sounds more like "your insurance won't pay for it because it is not an indicated study by ACR criteria."

I hear that spending hours on the phone trying to justify a test to an insurance company is no fun, and I bet the task is not made any easier if you don't actually believe that the study will help the patient.

[fencepost]

For anyone looking at self pay for an MRI in the US, there's an organization that offers that and other imaging services for the uninsured at $325 or less. https://radiologyassist.com/MRI.html

[greenglass]

HMO so yes, costs are a factor. But it was a small cost relative to repeated doctor visits, hospital costs, etc… MRI for massive HMO are not $5000 due to economies of scale. The dr in this case was angry because the MRI revealed brain tumors which needed to be monitored.

[n8henrie]

$5k would be the estimated outside-of-insurance cost to you, to avoid spending hours of the MD trying to justify the study with the insurance.

Meningiomas by chance?

Has the monitoring improved your health? I'm not sure whether I would be more or less troubled if I had symptoms with an unclear cause vs a possible cause but unclear management plan. I suppose this will be highly variable.