Price gouging by emergency rooms: The bills are rolling in

In June our child complained of a pain in his lower right side. When it comes to children, parents don't take the same chances as they might with themselves and of course, it being a Saturday, we brought him into the emergency room.

There, doctors refused to answer the question: Is it his appendix until...sonogram, catscan, on and on to the tune of $6700.00. Doctors can spew any version of homespun we care about you baloney, but this sort of overkill is obscene and exploitive. And what does it promote? Next time should we wait and see? Maybe so but doctors should not have it both ways first supporting preventive steps eg checking out a pain before there is a life threatening event and then price-gouging for such preventive steps.

I even have a text message between my spouse and myself requesting a halt to defensive medicine but of course, no opinion would be given until the $6700.00 worth of tests were given. Doctors should take some responsibility in emergency rooms for doing what they're asked to do: Is this an emergency eg is it appendix? If the answer is no, tell people to have other things checked out, don't run the gamut of expensive tests just to gouge consumers because you can.

Physicians naturally look at the problem in terms of how they get paid. In an article designed for physicians, addressing the problem in the appropriate setting (emergency room, doctor's office visit) is addressed only in a fleeting example in an article talking about requiring patients to pay up front or be denied care. See http://physicianentrepreneur.com/?p=380&caught_as=moderation#comment-caught.
Until doctors start taking some responsibility for price gouging through overkill, the cost of health services will not be containable.