[ryandrake]

You are right--Doctors absolutely share blame. Take my dentist's behavior, for example. When the oral hygienist is done doing all the real work, my dentist sits down for 10 minutes to count my teeth and say the words "You should floss more." She bills $85 for that sentence and calls it "Oral hygiene instructions". My insurance company (IMO rightly) denies paying for this. It's ridiculous and the dentist knows they're going to call bullshit on it, but they bill it anyway, and then I'm technically on the hook to pay for it. So far, the dentist has not yet attempted to balance bill that charge, and I will drop them like a bad habit if they ever do.

[foco_tubi]

Doctors and dentists in the US are not bound by the same regulations (or even a similar stringency of regulation) involving billing practices and procedure codes.