Challenging the basic assumption in US healthcare that more is better

About the harms of overtreatment

Reporter Jeanne Lenzer investigates overtreatment at the heart of healthcare.

More info and videos
  • 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.
  • Read Unnecessary care: are doctors in denial and is profit driven healthcare to blame?, 2012;345:e6230, 02 October 2012.
  • Video published on 3 October 2012 by The BMJ channel.
  • More pharma videos on our YT channel.

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