by Michelle Andrews
It can't hurt to ask if that blood test is really necessary.
People who visit their primary care doctors for routine care often find themselves poked, prodded and advised in all kinds of unnecessary and unhelpful ways.
Add it all up, and the cost of the dubious tests and medical interventions runs to about $6.8 billion a year. The annual checkup, an American medical tradition, is a prime offender.
Some of the waste seems so obvious. We're talking about doctors ordering blood tests when a patient has no risk factors or symptoms of illness, for example, or prescribing a brand-name cholesterol-lowering drug without first making sure a generic won't do the job.
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