Rich And Poor Alike Receive Terrible Health Care

As featured in USA Today, Dr. Otis Browley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, has recently penned a book entitled “How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick In America.”

One of the book’s themes is how just being wealth and having private health insurance is no guarantee of getting good health care. As Browley writes, “wealth in America is no protection from getting lousy care.… Wealth can increase your risk of getting lousy care. If you have more money, doctors sell you more of what they sell, and they just might kill you.”

Having good health insurance can lead to you receiving inferior care because it gives doctors an economic incentive to overtreat. This is all part of the problem with the fee-for-service model of health care that dominates American medicine, that we’ve blogged about many times before.

This blog is maintained by the Boston medical malpractice lawyers at The Law Office of Alan H. Crede, P.C.