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by: Shannon Brownlee  List Price: $25.95 Amazon.com's Price: $17.13 You Save: $8.82 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 362.10973 EAN: 9781582345802 Edition: 1 ISBN: 1582345805 Label: Bloomsbury USA Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: September 18, 2007 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Release Date: September 18, 2007 Studio: Bloomsbury USA Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Root cause for spiraling health care costs in the USThis country has spent a lot of time agonizing over health care delivery and costs ever since medicare was introduced in the 1960's. Since then, health care costs have increased at rates much higher than inflation causing health care to become unaffordable to many people and a huge economic burden on US businesses that must supply health care insurance to their employees. The way things are headed, Medicare will soon be insolvent (it's a much bigger problem than social security) and even more people ... Read More Rating:  - Healthcare System MisdiagnosisThe author clearly documents how our healthcare system frequently wastes resources on unnecessary scans and procedures due to a number of reasons including, demands of the patient, doctor's personal beliefs in a procedure, and the economic incentive of more procedures resulting in more profit. From the author's perspective, over treatment is the problem and the solution is better assessments of what scans and treatments are needed, part of which includes communication between the doctor and ... Read More Rating: - Excellent and important book"Overtreated" is a superb book for both experts and non-experts who want to learn more about health care in the U.S. It does a great job of explaining two important realities that are initially difficult for most people to grasp and accept: (1) modern medicine involves a lot more clinical uncertainty than most individuals realize and that the medical profession admits, and (2) that our current models for paying medical providers--hospitals, doctors, drug companies, home health providers, and others--routinely ... Read More Rating: - Thoughtful and Thorough Study of the Health Care CrisisEver since my husband decided to go back to school to get a degree in the medical field (he hasn't quite decided in what yet), I have gotten more interested in reading about topics in that particular field. This book is one of the more fascinating reading and perhaps one of the most disturbing reading. However, I will have to admit a lot of the material in this book is already familiar. There are times when I seem to recall a particular incident from reading the newspapers. But if you're in a small town like me, ... Read More Rating: - Crash Course on the Healthcare CrisisBalanced and thoroughly researched, this book illustrates how the failings of our healthcare system are more complex than simply claiming that insurers are greedy and malpractice insurance premiums are too expensive. Patients with the same illness are getting more costly medical care in certain parts of the country but actually do worse. The amount of medical care delivered is driven by the number of specialists, hospitals, and technology available in the community. The more doctors and hospitals ... Read More 
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