Of course, almost everything in our personal experience says just the opposite, that far from delivering too much care, our medical system isn’t giving us enough. This is the surprising and deeply counterintuitive message of Overtreated. Between 20 and 30 cents on every health care dollar we spend goes towards useless treatments and hospitalizations, towards CT scans we don’t need, towards ineffective surgeries-towards care that not only does nothing to improve our health, but that we wouldn’t want if we understood how dangerous it can be.
Each year, our medical system delivers an enormous amount of care that does nothing to improve our health or lengthen our lives.
These are the kinds of questions you may find yourself asking once you’ve read Overtreated.
Shannon Brownlee's humane, intelligent, and penetrating analysis empowers readers to avoid the perils of overtreatment, as well as pointing the way to better health care for everyone.Is a CT scan always necessary after your child suffers a bump on the head? Should you think twice before undergoing surgery for lower back pain? Are your elderly parents going to be allowed to die at home, or will they spend their last few weeks in a hospital, hooked up to machines and tubes, subjected to painful, unnecessary procedures? It offers a way to control costs and cover the uninsured, while simultaneously improving the quality of American medicine. Nevertheless, Overtreated ultimately conveys a message of hope by reframing the debate over health care reform. Brownlee dissects what she calls "the medical-industrial complex" and lays bare the backward economic incentives embedded in our system, revealing a stunning portrait of the care we now receive.
In this gripping, eye-opening book, award-winning journalist Shannon Brownlee takes readers inside the hospital to dismantle some of our most venerated myths about American medicine. We have some of the most skilled physicians in the world, yet one hundred thousand patients die each year from medical errors. Our health care is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans has no health insurance.
0 kommentar(er)
