Overtreated and Overbilled
Best-selling author Philip Moeller takes on health care in his new book, GET WHAT’S YOURS FOR HEALTH CARE (Simon & Schuster, January), which explains how to make intelligent health care decisions, talk to your doctor and receive the best possible care. In this excerpt, Moeller discusses how too many tests and procedures can lead to unneeded care and bad outcomes, as well as the costs of misdiagnoses from too little care—and what steps you can take to get just the right level of care.
AMERICANS GET TOO MUCH CARE THEY DON’T NEED AND TOO little care they do need. These twin problems—unneeded and misdiagnosed care—plagued medicine long before Hippocrates asked an Athenian to say “Aah” more than 2,500 years ago. They are fueled by doctors with the best of intentions and those who are not well informed or paying more attention to their wallets than their patients’ needs.
Whatever the causes, Americans consume too much health care, boosting the nation’s annual medical bills by $750 billion to $1 trillion. This waste is driven by health providers who encourage it and consumers who demand too much care, often because they don’t know the true cost of that care.
At the same time, millions and millions of Americans receive the wrong medical diagnosis. Their doctors either treat them for the wrong maladies or don’t uncover their true health needs and thus fail to treat them at all. Patients can be complicit here, failing to communicate effectively with their physicians. Whatever the causes, misdiagnoses are a huge, largely invisible medical problem.
The Cheapest Care Is the Care You Don’t Need
THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT UNNECESSARY CARE, OFTEN CALLED wasted care or low-value care, is that this problem has been solved—on paper. Beginning in 2012, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)
