There’s two costs to the US legal environment: Insurance premiums and defensive medicine. It’s in the doctor’s interest to run every test because it’s free to him, but failure to do so raises his risks. So you wind up spending money non-productively and you have a non-zero rate of false positives, unnecessary treatment, etc.
Interestingly, I think they may be bringing that cost under control. I had an injury recently, and it took 2 trips to the doctor (each one with a fee) before they agreed to do a cat scan (with another fee) and find out what was actually wrong with me.
