655 Overtreated (Archive)

We usually assume that the primary problem with health care in the U.S. is that so many people don’t have good access to it. But while many Americans suffer because of lack of medical care, others undergo unnecessary procedures or take potentially dangerous drugs they don’t really need. How does the health care system lead to overtreatment and what are the consequences?
Guest: Shannon Brownlee, essayist and writer, has written for The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, Time, Washington Monthly, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.
Ms. Brownlee is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, is her first book.
She is the winner of several prestigious journalism awards, including the 2004 Association of Health Care Journalists Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.