It's even worse than that, he was testing asymptomatic patients with a full panel. That part takes it from probably unethical to full-blown fraud for me.
> But in interviews, asymptomatic patients said they had also received the more expensive test.
For asymptomatic patients, doing those tests could easily cause net harm from follow-up to false positives. So, even if the tests had been free, it's probably unethical.
This is why organizations like the United States Preventative Services Task Force exist. They review studies and recommend best practices for medical screening. They do recommend against asymptomatic screening for a lot of tests.
> But in interviews, asymptomatic patients said they had also received the more expensive test.