Going to the Doctor is a Bad Game

This is another semi-cross-post from GE Adventure this one looking at the economics of going to the doctor. One of the theories we've been batting around is that health is a bad game. David Lee, a health economist at GE helped us understand just how bad a game the regular visit is:

As David explained, a regular doctor visit has a bad risk/reward situation: There is a low liklihood anything is wrong but good chance that if something is wrong that it's serious. On top of this, people have a tendency to overestimate small risks and devalue the future, all leading to a situation where it's hard to get people into a regular routine of visits.

He even offered some thoughts on solving it, mainly that you need to accurately communicate how unlikely it is for something to be wrong and "be prepared with a good explanation of how to approach the issue and the liklihood of success." Interesting.