Shannon Brownlee: How can we curb soaring healthcare costs?

In most markets, paying more buys better quality. But in health care, the normal rules of economics don't seem to apply. Americans spend twice as much per capita on average as any other developed country. The cost of U.S. health care has outstripped growth in the general economy for more than 30 years, and shows no signs of slowing down. Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, argues that our health care is so expensive because we waste as much as a third of every health care dollar, about $700 billion a year, on care that patients don't need – and would probably avoid if they knew how useless and dangerous it is.

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