Internist Robert Centor provides some suggestions to fix health care.

On one point, he calls out emergency physicians, saying because of high exposure to malpractice claims, “technology trumps the history and physical examination.” Often times, “when in doubt, they image.”

This draws a sharp rebuke from Texas emergency physician GruntDoc, who points out that “ED care was 3.5% of the total healthcare budget. Squeeze out all the negative imaging studies and it’d be less, but getting a margin out of 3.5% to make a dent in total healthcare expenditures would be difficult to say the least.”

Is Dr. Centor being “dismissively arrogant,” or does he does he rightly point to a significant driver of health care spending?