Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer
by Shannon Brownlee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Shannon BrownleeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-02
ISBN: 1582345791
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Book Reviews of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer
Book Review: A beginning of a solution to a MAJOR problem
Summary: 4 Stars
How long can we Americans maintain a health care system where healthy 20-somethings are paying $800/month for which they get little in return (other than being "in Good Hands") while older adults pay very little and have $100,000 spent on them during the last year of their life? How long will we stomach doctors who make 8 times the median income yet complain that they don't make enough? Will patients forever demand the best $120 a month antihypertensive when a $2.00/ month diuretic will work better, with fewer side effects? How long will Medicare pay MDs to have conflict of interest, referring sick people to institutions that provide the doctor with tangible kickbacks?
Ms. Brownlee does a very good job of explaining how we got to this place. I'm certain that drug manufacturers, physicians, hospitals, and durable medical equipment providers would be infuriated by this book. That alone is enough to endorse it!
Her suggestion that Medicare should look more like the VA in the future is slightly suspect. I recommend that she call the VA and try to speak to a human being. True, most of the complaints are about the VA's history, but they are a difficult system to access and are TYPICALLY out of the loop when a patient is hospitalized in a non-VA hospital, which is frequently. I recently had a VA patient in the hospital and in true bureaucratic form, he received his notice to come in for his annual physical, even though he hadn't been out of a (private) hospital bed for 4 months.
Likewise, her projection that health care in the USA will resemble Kaiser Permanente or other HMOs also has a tough row to hoe. While these organizations are very efficient, they have a real image problem as well as facing tremendous resistance from MDs who know they've got a golden egg-laying goose in private practice.
The bottom line is our system is driven by greed instead of meeting the needs sick people. It produces tremendous profits by taking advantage of people during their time of need. The system pumps their fears, sells them on the 'best and latest,' then barely monitors them during the delivery of 'services.' Greed and fear are problems that cannot be addressed with relatively pain-free institutional changes. So, get ready, America: your health care system is sick and the cure is going to be hard to swallow! Give Ms. Brownlee a read if you don't believe it!
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