The eponymous ranter of DB’s Medical Rants voices certain suspicions about doctors’ decisionmaking:

As I understand economics and human motivation, the story I blogged last week about oncologist’s prescribing patterns [a story that is blogged at Sufficient Scruples below] in no way surprises me. I doubt that most oncologists consiously make these decisions based on money. Rather, I suspect that reimbursement subconsiously influences their decision making.

Our decision processes are generally very complex. We need not assume that someone makes decisions with the sole purpose of making money. Nonetheless, we would be naive to imagine that money does not impact our decision making processes. . . . Even if we assume multiattribute decision making, money likely takes its place as one of the attributes.

The problem with this situation is that it has a poor appearance.

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