Defensive medicine exacts huge costs, in both fiscal and human terms.
Take a recent story on a University of Washington and Harvard Medical School study. These women go through hell. Easier to quantify are defensive medicine's costs to society. I am an oncologist, not a psychologist. The reality of being a physician today is a high-wire act in which we must balance deadly health threats to our patients against real costs to them in the form of discomfort, money and peace of mind.