I'm not sure where to draw the line, though. How do you determine when "just in case" costs too much?
Remember, all Austrians paid for your mris and X-rays. I don't doubt it was worth it this specific case, but aren't the incentives wrong?
Systems like these can be susceptible to abuse and this should be researched and prevented as much as possible but this attitude that any free health care receiver is to be treated with suspicion and distrust till proven innocent is not healthy, sorry for the pun.
This is good in theory but very difficult to implement effectively. The conservatives take an extreme condescending view of social welfare and demand extreme checks on it whereas any checks and balances for abuse is what is attacked by many liberals/leftists.
That's where immigration is playing a destructive force. A lot of immigrants (if not all/most) can be seen abusing social welfare.
Also slightly related is what is happening in Briton w.r.t brexit. Brexit was welcome by many Britons also for this reason.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Older doctors might still give you referals to specialists or radiographers upon request, and check every tickbox on a blood test sheet, but younger doctors are tought that every additional test puts strain on the solvency and labor capacity of the health care system, and will not have irrelevant or unnecessary tests performed.
In Belgium, MRI and CAT scan capacity is limited, and you can't have an MRI on a whim - you need to be referred by a general practitioner to get one.
the physicians usually try to take the safe route just in case - if they deem it worth it. i'm still in the low risk category (~~young~~ not old, passably athletic) so my doctor told me more than once that it's probably nothing and we don't need to do the (expensive) X, the (cheap) Y is enough (maybe Y reveals something that justifies X).
it doesn't always work; as a personal anecdote - my uncle suffered a debilitating headache once and was told to take aspirin for several days until my aunt had enough and drove him to the hospital on her own. turned out to be cerebral bleeding. he barely survived and is now mentally disabled.
this a) takes him out of the workforce, which looses the state money through reduced taxes and b) ensures him an invalidity pension, which costs the state money.
was it worth it to save the money? on paper it's the additional cost of checking N people who're having headaches plus the cost of treating M people who're actually affected vs. the money he would have paid into the system plus the money he now costs the system over, say, 20 years. additionally he consumes less and his wife's business is struggling because he's not much help anymore.
for us, personally, it's still a tragedy, but those cases happen. you have to draw the line somewhere. it's not just additional costs though, it's still a trade off.
> How do you determine when
> "just in case" costs too
> much
No. If you see bad outcomes from wrong incentives, come forth.