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Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Average Rating
Author:
Brownlee, Shannon
Published:
Bloomsbury Publishing 2010
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
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. 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.
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Subjects
Subjects
Business
Medical
Sociology
Nonfiction
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
06/25/2010
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781596917293
ASIN:
B003TWOK7A
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Shannon Brownlee. (2010). Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Shannon Brownlee. 2010. Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Shannon Brownlee. Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Grouped Work ID:
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Needs Update?:
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 17:57:31
Date Updated:
Jan 19, 2024 17:43:15
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Apr 21, 2024 09:32:46
Last Metadata Change:
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Last Availability Change:
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OverDrive Product Record

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      • bioText: Shannon Brownlee's stories and essays about medicine, health care, and biotechnology have appeared in such publications as the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and Time. Born and raised in Honolulu, she holds a master's degree in biology from the University of California. She is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. Brownlee lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and son.
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title
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fullDescription
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. 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.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of How Doctors Think
      • content: In the blizzard of books on our healthcare system, Shannon Brownlee's is unique in its provocative argument that individuals and the nation suffer from misguided and costly treatments. Patients, physicians, and policy makers would do well to consider her evidence as an important prescription for reform.
      • premium: False
      • source: Christian Science Monitor
      • content: [Brownlee reaches a] fascinating, counterintuitive, and potentially revolutionary conclusion...she takes a clear-eyed look at some baffling questions.
      • premium: False
      • source: Conde Nast Portfolio
      • content: Exhaustive takedown of the U.S. health-care system...Overtreated eclipses Michael Moore's reporting and eschews his polemics. By piling on facts, Brownlee shows why Americans spend so much on health care yet are in measurably poorer shape than the residents of just about every other developed nation.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from July 23, 2007
        Contrary to Americans' common belief that in health care more is more—that more spending, drugs and technology means better care—this lucid report posits that less is actually better. Medical journalist Brownlee acknowledges that state-of-the-art medicine can improve care and save lives. But technology and drugs are misused and overused, she argues, citing a 2003 study of one million Medicare recipients, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine
        , which showed that patients in hospitals that spent the most “were 2% to 6% more likely to die than patients in hospitals that spent the least.” Additionally, she says, billions per year are spent on unnecessary tests and drugs and on specialists who are rewarded more for some procedures than for more appropriate ones. The solution, Brownlee writes, already exists: the Veterans Health Administration outperforms the rest of the American health care system on multiple measures of quality. The main obstacle to replicating this model nationwide, according to the author, is a powerful cartel of organizations, from hospitals to drug companies, that stand to lose in such a system. Many of Brownlee's points have been much covered, but her incisiveness and proposed solution can add to the health care debate heated up by the release of Michael Moore's Sicko
        .

popularity
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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. 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...
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