Disease, diagnoses, and dollars; facing the ever-expanding market for medical care

SciTech Book News, March, 2009

Disease, diagnoses, and dollars; facing the ever-expanding market for medical care.

Kaplan, Robert M.

Springer

2009

187 pages

$25.00

Hardcover

RA410

Kaplan (health services, U. of California at Los Angeles) takes a provocative look at preventive care in the United States. He argues that the current model, in which those with access to health care are aggressively screened for disease, is problematic for a number of reasons. Modern medicine is not well equipped to eradicate chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease and many will be better off not knowing about the diseases in their bodies, as treatment can cause problems that harm overall well-being. Furthermore, aggressive screening can also lead to unnecessary treatment. Aggressive screening also has negative public health consequences, he contends, in that it drives up health care costs for everybody, leading those that can't afford it without access to necessary treatments.

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