An interesting piece in today’s Washington Post on the issue of doctors and self-referrals. An excerpt:

In August 2005, doctors at Urological Associates, a medical practice on the Iowa-Illinois border, ordered nine CT scans for patients covered by Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance. In September that year, they ordered eight. But then the numbers rose steeply. The urologists ordered 35 scans in October, 41 in November and 55 in December. Within seven months, they were ordering scans at a rate that had climbed more than 700 percent.
The increase came in the months after the urologists bought their own CT scanner, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Instead of referring patients to radiologists, the doctors started conducting their own imaging — and drawing insurance reimbursements for each of those patients.

MSNBC’s parent company, GE, makes oodles of money selling things like CT scanners, as well as helping to finance the purchase of said scanners. And from the tone of the piece, the insinuation is that these scans are not necessary. Seems like a natural story for a cable news channel to want to investigate, right?