After he developed shortness of breath, his cardiologist determined he needed a heart valve replaced. She recounted the story of a friend's 89-year-old father, an active man and avid golfer. Overtreatment is about 'getting care you don't need and that can harm you,' Brownlee told the audience. Rationing is denying care that people need to make them better.

Let's be clear about what overtreatment is not: it's not rationing. This is a hard concept for many Americans to wrap their minds around, the notion that they might be 'overtreated.' It's against this backdrop that I spoke with Shannon Brownlee at Berkeley Uncharted, the annual ideas festival.īrownlee literally wrote the book on the topic with Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making us Sicker and Poorer. Let's be clear about what overtreatment is not: it's not rationing.īut at the same time that so many are underserved, many more are overserved. 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.With a new afterword offering practical advice to patients on how to navigate the health care system.As Obamacare's open enrollment kicks off for the third year, in California, there are still almost 4 million people who are uninsured, part of the many more millions nationally who lack reliable access to health care. Itoffers a way to control costs and cover the uninsured while simultaneously improving the quality of American medicine. 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.Nevertheless,Overtreatedultimately conveys a message of hope by reframing the debate over health care reform. 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.

'My choice for the economics book of the 's the best description I have yet read of a huge economic problem that we know how to solvebut is so often misunderstood.'David Leonhardt,New YorkTimesOur health care is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans has no health insurance.

Overtreated by shannon brownlee