Health screening has flip side

Health insurance companies that promote medical screening could be barking up the wrong tree, according to one professor .

The leading health specialist has launched a full assault against the medical screening industry for their continued promotion of unproven procedures.

The director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine in London, Nicholas Wald, has said that early screening methods are being touted as a preventative method with dubious results. The Professor refers to health ‘MOT’ checks that are inaccurate and cause anxiety.

Wald said that insurance companies are amongst the most serious culprits. He reportedly commented, in the Journal of Medical Screening: Screening is usually a weak means of providing reassurance because [it] generally misses most cases of the disease for which [it] is carried out ... there is always some harm which is only acceptable if there is also some benefit.

Of particular concern, Wald states, is Saga Insurance .