Why Does Health Care Cost So Much?
AARP – The Magazine
Shannon Brownlee
Author of: “Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer” 2007
1. Babies born in 42 other countries have a better chance of survival than those born in the USA.
2. Three reasons for the high cost of health care:
- Too easy access to care
- Malpractice costs
- Administrative costs
3. The number one reason for the high cost of health care is unnecessary care.
4. Dartmouth University researcher, Elliott Fischer, MD, says unnecessary care leads to the death of as many as 30,000 Medicare recipients annually.
5. 50% of surgeries, tests, and procedures are not backed by scientific evidence, but rather are based on old patterns of care.
6. $16 billion is spent on spinal fusion even though there has never been a rigorous government study demonstrating that surgery is superior to other methods of care.
7. Patients are too demanding. They insist on drugs and treatment they have seen in the media, ads paid for by the companies that manufacture them. Parents demanding care for the children are the worst.
8. MD’s:
- Fear losing patients so they give in to demands
- Fear lawsuits so they order unnecessary tests
- Make more income by ordering more tests and procedures
9. The Institute of Medicine recently published a report that estimates that only 50% of what is done by MD’s today is backed up by valid, scientific evidence. The rest is based on medical tradition and faulty assumptions about how our body works.