Hi   I saw your comment about sketchy podiatrists and had to add my own story.  I went in  to a new podiatrist with a request for a general overview. I see podiatrists about yearly for heel scrapes etc. So this man sees a small yellow stain on my toenail and tells me it’s a fungus. OK well I would never have known. So he cuts it out and then starts up with the “so you can go on medication for up to a year which will destroy your liver or as luck would have it I have a laser – you’ll need eight weekly sessions.   and then one monthly til the nail grows back – cost is $160 per session”.  So I’m not an accountant I’m a lawyer and I have a healthy amount of scepticism but first thought was even as a lawyer that’s a heavy hit!.  I had one session that day.  What he didn’t do – test the kind of fungus.  Tell me how to clean my shoes so the fungus didn’t come back.  None of those things.  I ended up coming back for three more sessions of the cold laser.  I was researching hard to see what evidence there was for the success of these but not able to find any independent studies.
My health fund would not pay for the sessions which I took as an indicator that it’s not proven medical treatment .  On the fourth session I said to his associate “I won’t be coming back for any more sessions as I can’t afford them”.  This women gave me the silent treatment, took my card, processed it and walked out of the room without saying a word.  Busted much?!  This was in Sydney Australia.