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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015 - Less Wrong
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The doctor you are with has a financial interest to treat you. When he advises you against doing something about the cyst he's acting against his own financial interests.
Overtreatment isn't good if you value life very much. Every medical interventions comes with risks. We don't fully understand the human body, so we don't know all the risks.
From the perspective of the doctor the question likely isn't: "How much money is the patient willing to invest in health" but "How much is the patient willing to invest for the cosmetic issue of getting rid of an ugly cyst".
If the surgery isn't necessary, and something goes wrong during it, does the doctor need to worry about getting sued?
If I remember right the best predictor for a doctor getting sued is whether patients perceive the doctor to be friendly.
Advising against a unnecessary practice might be malpractice but informing a patient about the option to do so, especially when there are cosmetic reasons for it, shouldn't be a big issue.
Even good doctors can get sued. But it speaks to more about why people sue; (doctors did a bad human-interaction job rather than they did a negligent job)
I do wonder about the nature of doctoring. Do you happen to get 3% (arbitrary number) wrong; and if you are also bad at people-skills, this bites you. whereas if you get 3% wrong and you are good at people skills you avoid being sued 99% of those 3% of cases.