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Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer
Bloomsbury Publishing
September 2007
On Sale: September 18, 2007
352 pages ISBN: 1582345805 EAN: 9781582345802 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Though touted as perhaps the best in the world, the American
medical system is filled with hypocrisies. Our health care
is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans has no
health insurance. We have some of the most skilled
physicians in the world, yet one hundred thousand patients
die each year from medical errors. 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. Using vivid
examples of real patients and physicians, Overtreated
debunks the idea that most of medicine is based in sound
science, and shows how our health care system delivers huge
amounts of unnecessary care that is not only expensive and
wasteful but can actually imperil the health of patients.
The interests of politicians and the medical-industrial
complex continually trump those of patients, seducing the
wealthy with unnecessary procedures and leaving the poor
with haphazard access to treatment. Backward economic
incentives allow patients with chronic conditions to receive
ineffective care, and roll after roll of red tape undermines
even the best-intentioned doctors. Tens of thousands of
patients die each year from overtreatment. American medicine
is in desperate need of fixing. Nevertheless, Overtreated ultimately conveys a message of
hope by reframing the debate over health care reform.
Americans worry about rationing—that any effort to rein in
the high cost of health care will result in limited access
to life-saving treatments. Covering the uninsured seems like
an insurmountable problem because it will drive up costs
even more. Overtreated offers a way to control costs and
cover the uninsured, while simultaneously improving the
quality of American medicine. 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.
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