The final component of health literacy is the ability to maintain health through self-management and working in partnerships with health providers. After communicating your concerns, your physician should help you create a plan for treating your symptoms or collecting more data. If any tests or treatments make you uncomfortable, discuss why and expect to have your personal feelings respected. If you will not follow the recommended plan, be honest with why and consider your risk vs. reward. This is not a negotiation, it's a conversation between two parties who want you to have the best quality of life possible. The right choice for you and the right choice for everyone, in general, may not be the same.
How Medicine Works and When it Doesn't makes the statement that "more health care is not better health care." In the US medical industry, which is run by administrators to turn the largest possible profit for shareholders, there is an option for VIP Health Care. These chosen few have access to full-body scans, any testing imaginable, and unlimited office visits with a variety of expert specialists - and they are no healthier than anyone else. In fact, the author of How Medicine Works claims that they are much less satisfied with their quality of life due to false positives from excessive testing and side effects from over-medication.
Pharmaceutical companies in the US spend huge portions of their budgets on advertising. Some of the advertising goes towards the patients - the ads in magazines or in commercials with people walking hand-in-hand, and some of the advertising is towards the prescribing physician. Be aware of both types of marketing when you or your physician are interested in a new medication.
"Generic" medications are functional compounds of original, patented drugs that can be sold in their place at a discount to insurance companies and patients. The drug patenting system is timed, so generic and biosimilar compounds available for lower prices exist, but aren't allowed to be marketed to consumers. In 2023 the biologic injection Humira had its patent expire. Before biosimilars were available, a year of Humira cost nearly $80,000 USD.