Oh, yeah. What Oak Leaf is saying is definitely true. I saw it a lot when I worked ER.

There are a LOT (and I mean alotalot) of patients who have ulterior motives for going to the Dr. I'm not talking abou any normal people and I doubt there's anybody like that on this forum. The kind of people I'm talking about don't have the motivation or inclination to bicycle, so they won't be on here. They make up a very small percentage (I think I may have heard the figure 3%?) of the general population but use up a huge percentage (75%) of health care, at least in the ER. They go from doctor to doctor to doctor looking for any kind of medication that will get peple high, or looking for a chance to file a lawsuit, etc. It is literally a full-time job for them. They actually spend at least 40 hours a week doing it. They'll drive all over the state. I used to see them outside the ER selling their pain pills to drug dealers. Some of them manage to get thousands of pain pills per month.

Most people who aren't in health care don't believe this is true, but it only takes about a week of working in an ER/doctors office before it becomes crystal clear.

The term "doctor shopping" came about from those patients. Unfortunately, now anybody who even looks for a second opinion gets labeled a "doctor shopper" and that is totally unfair. People are encouraged to get second opinions but, when they do, they're treated like scum.

This is one of the big reasons I've been trying to get out of healthcare. All the practitioners are so jaded that legitimate patients don't get what they need or deserve.

One way to avoid being treated badly for looking for a 2nd opinion would be to go to a Dr. who doesn't accept medicaid and, therefore, isn't jaded. Almost all of the patients who do that are on medicaid.

I wonder if this is a problems in countries other than the U.S.?