Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer,   ISBN:9781582345796

Customer Rating: 

Rather than an objective analysis of the ills of the current medical climate this tome is an obviously biased plea for universal healthcare. The writers prejudices are blatant in the introduction and the manipulation of statistics to back those prejudices taints the book. What I find most disturbing is the author's inability to understand that the ills she speaks of are a direct result of the disconnect between consumer and direct cost. The solution is to re-establish the relationship of treatment to cost in the mind of the consumer. The current system suffers from the "tragedy of the commons" --when people do not perceive something as costing them anything, they have no incentive to use it wisely or frugally.

With so many statements I know to be misleading and outright misused, although I agree with the premise that Americans are overtreated, I cannot rely on anything in this book because of the intellectual dishonesty of the author and her refusal to see the obvious solution which she dismisses in the intro.

Give it a pass,

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.