Overtreated (Postponed)

**THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.**

American health care is reaching a tipping point. Costs are rising at an unsustainable rate while the number of uninsured Americans persists, and the quality of care remains astonishingly poor. Health care now tops the domestic political agenda, and there are several proposals for reforming the system so that we can simultaneously cover the entire population, improve quality and bring down costs. Improving quality will mean increasing the evidence base of health care. To bring down costs, we have to find ways to reduce the huge volume of unnecessary care that’s delivered to American patients.

In Overtreated, Shannon Brownlee argues that less is more with health care. She notes that Americans spend between one-fifth and one-third of health-care dollars on unnecessary treatments, medications, devices and tests. What's worse, there are an estimated 30,000 deaths per year caused by this unnecessary care. Multi-pronged solutions are needed, according to Brownlee, including ramping up federally funded clinical research, and a reimbursement system that rewards providers for the quality of care they deliver, not the quantity. Several models for excellent care already exist: group practices, like the Mayo Clinic, and other coordinated systems, like the Veterans Health Administration, which outperform the rest of the health care system on multiple measures of quality.

Join the New America Foundation for a comprehensive look at the American health care system with an array of experts: Shannon Brownlee is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, Elliott S. Fisher is a noted authority on the causes and consequences of regional variations in medical practice and spending, Gregg Bloche has written extensively about the policy issues surrounding medical evidence, and Len Nichols is Director of Health Policy at the New America Foundation. Following the presentation will be a robust Q&A session.

Participants

• Shannon Brownlee
  Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
  Author, Overtreated
• Elliott S. Fisher
  Professor of Medicine and Community and Family Medicine
  Dartmouth Medical School and the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences
• Gregg Bloche, MD
  Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution
  Professor, Georgetown Law School
  
• Len Nichols
  Director, Health Policy Program
  New America Foundation