And here are the reasons why.

Misaligned incentives, overzealous pharmaceutical marketing, expectations of high cost testing/therapeutics, excessive administrative costs and complications due to overprescribing and fear of litigation.

John Halamka and Rich Parker present thorough sample of reasons why spending is spiraling out of control.

Consider the last reason, fear of litigation. The co-authors state that “as a country, we need to realize that delayed or misdiagnosis will occur despite best efforts and accept a low level of imperfect outcomes instead of forcing every doctor to overtreat every patient in the pursuit of 100% certainty. Both patients and doctors together must accept some degree of uncertainty or we will continue to bankrupt our system.”

Well said.

topics: costs, overtreatment