More Money, Less Health (The Baltimore Sun) 

A few years ago, health journalist Shannon Brownlee was going through some global health statistics. She noticed that even as U.S. health care costs were rising steadily, Americans were not getting healthier. How to explain this apparent paradox?

Brownlee became fascinated and began to collect data in search of answers. The result is Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, her analysis of how American health care has failed.

The book has received good reviews and was praised by one prominent economics columnist as the best business book of 2007. ... Last week, Brownlee, who lives in Annapolis with her husband and 12-year-old son, talked to The Sun about the perils of doing too much, and what might cure this ailment.

What's the key problem with our health care system?

Most physicians think of themselves as businessmen and -women. It's all based on the way we reimburse doctors and hospitals. Most payments to doctors and hospitals are called fee-for-service. In other words, they get paid for doing something, either having an office visit, giving you a test, putting you in the hospital, a consult in the hospital. This fee-for-service system basically rewards doctors and hospitals to do more rather than to do better. That's the central problem, I think, is the payment system. It's providing all these perverse incentives to do more. ...