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ER physicians are at particular risk for law suits and they tend to over-test people to protect them from making diagnostic errors; they don't know these patients. As a result this drives up the cost for health care.    

MDs generally don't admit their mistakes unless they are caught. There are a lot of potential repercussions from bringing a mistake into the limelight. Mistakes are actually very common.          

  Merck Pharmaceuticals murdered 50,000 people by causing heart attacks and strokes from their drug, Vioxx, that they knew would cause these problems, yet they still withheld this information from the FDA and the general public. Merck's internal records that we supoened under the Freedom of Information Act dislosed that they were aware of these problems...

Tens of thousands of metal on metal artificial hips are failing years earlier than expected and are requiring a second surgery to take the old device out and put in a new one. There has been no tracking system to follow how they do, although after the fact a tracking system is being implemented by orthopedists now. This is coming at a price of about $1 billion....

Doctors generally don't report medication errors because there's so much fear when a mistake is made. Practicing medicine is very difficult and doctors need to be fully engaged with their patients, rather than detached and scientific. MDs have their own lives that are filled with challenges and this takes away from giving their full attention; errors are more...

  In 2011 there was a US Supreme Court ruling that pharmaceutical companies making drugs during the life of their patent are liable for inadequate safety warnings on the label of the drug. In June of 2013 the same court ruled that generic drug producers were NOT liable for law suits related to adverse drug reactions not printed on the label so long as...

  Defensive medicine leads to ordering too many tests that are often costly and potentially dangerous. It leads to skyrocketing insurance premiums but it tends to protect physicians from malpractice suits. What is needed is a more personal relationship between physicians and patients that includes patients in the decision-making process in assessment...