| View Larger Image | Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer | Paperbackby Shannon Brownlee (Author)
| List Price: | $16.00 | | Price: | $6.40 | | You Save: | $9.60 (60%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Bloomsbury USA | | Edition: | 1st Edition | | Page Count: | 368 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 02, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 737,331th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
“My choice for the economics book of the year…it’s the best description I have yet read of a huge economic problem that we know how to solve—but is so often misunderstood.”—David Leonhardt, New York TimesOur 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. 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, Overtreated ultimately conveys a message of hope by reframing the debate over health care reform. It 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. With a new afterword offering practical advice to patients on how to navigate the health care system. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 28 reviews)
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Excellent by Michael C. Hebert (New Orleans, LA)  4 Stars
August 30, 2009
The author does a fine job of pointing out the wasteful overspending in health care, and backs it up with lots and lots of relevant facts. The book is packed with enough information to allow readers to win any debate about health care reform at any casual cocktail party. And probably most debates with professionals, too.
The only fault I find with the book is that the author is a little hard on the doctors for ordering too many tests and procedures. She is right, to be sure, but she overlooks an essential point. Doctors and patients are people, and won't always behave in the most rational fashion. When there are human beings involved there will always be a certain amount of inefficiency.
Nevertheless, she is arguing nothing but the facts, and it is hard to go wrong when you stick to the truth.
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The health care crisis least talked about - a very important book by Randy Stapilus (Carlton, Oregon, USA)  5 Stars
May 09, 2009
The counter-intuitive title pretty much says it. Yes, the lack of health insurance is an enormous problem; the lack of affordable health care generally is even bigger. But a key part of the problem has to do with some of the reasons that hideously expensive system is so expensive, and it includes a lot of treatment that shouldn't be. It isn't the whole problem - our dystopian health care system has enough separate and distinctive and important problems to fill a bookshelf - but this is a key problem that's too often missed.
This investigative book is excellent reading about what should be an important part of all that. A whole lot of what is done in the name of our health isn't making us healthier, and we nationally need to come to grips with that. Soon. May our health care policymakers read it carefully.
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Excellent Diagnosis, Falls Short on Coming up with Cure by Fiona's Mom (arlington mass) 4 Stars
March 11, 2009
This book does an excellent job diagnosing the ills of our health care system. You've heard about them before but this book puts them into an overarching context. FYI, I am not in the medical field and I found this book very accessible. The solutions she comes up with here are not a cure but they are a good start. This book has been thoroughly reviewed here, so let me just add that it will help you understand some of the current policies being proposed, such as putting medical records on the computer, and having the gov't review medicine/procedures/devices for efficacy (rather than biased for-profit corporations). I am not convinced that a single-payer health care system is THE answer but this book helped me understand why a lot of people are.
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Thought-provoking by Pamela S. Lee (North Carolina) 4 Stars
December 28, 2008
This book obviously presents only one side of the issues it addresses, but the information is still useful. As I read through each chapter, I was forced to consider my own beliefs about health care as well as the flaws in the current system. While not objective, Overtreated is a good addition to your health care reform reading list.
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tremendous book by Elizabeth Post (Philadelphia, PA USA) 5 Stars
December 02, 2008
This is just a great book. I have long thought that health insurance costs are way out of line because we are just made to have too many procedures and tests. This has become protocol and everyone has bought into it. I've read many books and articles lately that show that all this testing has not actually produced more health among Americans. Not to mention the fact that this approach also makes us all feel that we are not healthy, and makes us fearful all the time of what may be wrong and what the tests may show. This creation of fear and dread among healthy people is worse than the waste of money. The body has incredible healing powers of its own. A lot of the interventions by doctors creates "patients" when we would have been better left alone. It's a bad way to live, but everyone is convinced that all this stuff is necessary. I hope this book takes off and opens the eyes of many.
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