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American Medical Culture and the Health Care Crisis

Atlantic Hematology/Oncology Group, Absecon, New Jersey

The health care crisis is easily defined as a pro gressive and massive rise in costs coupled with a failure of the system to provide care to a large minor ity of the population (37 million). Multiple remedies have been proposed, none of which confronts the core problem. This crisis has been largely produced by the American medical culture—how our physicians prac tice, what they do to and order for patients. Clearly, medical culture in other Western democracies is dif ferent, yielding better overall health care at a lower cost. A brief analysis of any of the sectors of medicine or surgery reveals the overabundance of clinical in terventions that take place. The solution will require a major reduction in clinical interventions so many of which are questionable, useless, or even harmful.

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