Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much For Health Care [Paperback]

The biggest threat to Americas prosperity, and even its solvency, is the mismatch between the amazingly and increasingly competent science of medicine and the amazingly and increasingly incompetent pricing and allocation of it. Now come Silver and Hyman to frighten us with the facts, and to point to ways the biggest player in the health care gamethe governmentcan stop making matters worse.As CEO of Whole Foods, which spent more than $250 million on health care for our team members last year, I thought I knew how inefficient health care was. Overcharged opened my eyes to how truly dysfunctional Americas health care system has become. This is not capitalism. Capitalism forces me to spend every day trying to provide greater value at a lower price. Silver and Hyman show that health care does not work that waynot because health care is special, but because Americans have let government and insurers control our health care dollars, and more of the same will only make things worse. Change will come, but only when consumers control their health care dollars and begin exerting massive pressure from below.The purpose of the system we use to pay for medical services is to move the largest possible number of dollars into the health care sector, so that is what it does. American health care is expensive by design.Why is the American health care system so dysfunctional and expensive? Why does the EpiPen, containing $1 worth of medicine, cost $600? Why do hospitalized patients receive bills laden with inflated and surprise charges that come out of the blue from out-of-network providers, or that demand payment for services that werent delivered? Why is more than $1 trillionone out of every three dollars that passes through the systemlost to fraud, wasted on services that dont help patients, or misspent? What are the causes of spiraling costs, mediocre quality, and limited access? Overcharged details how the answers to these questions are connected and reveals a system thalĂB