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Thursday, May 7, 2015

America's Epidemic Of Useless Medical Care, And Other Things You Didn't Have Time To Read

Atul Gawande On America's Epidemic Of Unnecessary Care

Atul Gawande » The New Yorker » 32 Minutes

Coming off his examination of end-of-life care in 2014's critically acclaimed Being Mortal, Gawande turns his sights on the rampant excess of "no-value care" in the American health-care system. 
Excessive — and useless — treatment is pervasive and has clear fiscal downsides for normal people:
Virtually every family in the country, the research indicates, has been subject to overtesting and overtreatment in one form or another. The costs appear to take thousands of dollars out of the paychecks of every household each year.
The overdiagnosing of harmless abnormalities is expensive — and it isn't helping:
Over the past two decades, we’ve tripled the number of thyroid cancers we detect and remove in the United States, but we haven’t reduced the death rate at all. 
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