“Unnecessary spending will continue until we have a reliable system of medical justice that protects reasonable decisions – like prescribing aspirin instead of a CAT scan for a headache.”

“Said Dr. Alan Sager, a co-author of the Boston University study, ‘[W]e need to demand that health care gets reshaped in ways that encourage and persuade doctors to take charge of spending money more carefully [and] … weed out clinical waste.’ Sager also noted that ‘waste comes from unnecessary care, defensive medicine, excessive paperwork born of mistrust between insurers and doctors, as well as theft and fraud.'”

A study suggests that unless defensive medicine is reigned in, health care costs will continue to spiral. After all, a CT scan for a headache is much easier to defend in court than clinical suspicion (via Common Good).