Harms of overtreatment

Reporter Jeanne Lenzer investigates overtreatment at the heart of healthcare.

Overly aggressive treatment is estimated to cause 30 000 deaths among Medicare recipients alone each year. Overall, unnecessary interventions are estimated to account for 10-30% of spending on healthcare in the US, or $250bn-800bn (£154bn-490bn; €190bn-610bn) annually.

This video features Shannon Brownlee, acting director of the New America Health Policy Program and author of Overtreated: How Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, David Himmelstein, professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health, and Vikas Saini, a Harvard cardiologist and president of the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation.

[ktorpie]

As a patient, I am happy to see this conversation taking place. But one point seems to be glaringly absent. Medicine as a business requires decisions to be made with profit in mind. If all doctors were salaried employees, hospital management would be using the same financial incentives in directing the limits of care. The problem doesn't go away. It just changes hands. Even in nationalized medicine the parameters are decided by government according to financial (and political) decisions.

[moushka]

Five stars. An excellent video that should be seen and considered by all. The current Cdn government is pushing Canada in this direction. Harper is obliterating public policy (i.e., the common good) in favour of private industry as fast as he can. National health care has its problems but, like democracy, it's better than any thing else we've tried.

[Melker]

08:10 To this patient I would recommend a lifestyle-change instead of just just five expensive pills. My ordination would be: stop smoking, avoid alcohol, go vegetarian and start walking.