San Jose Mercury News | UCSC Grad Winning Kudos for 'Overtreated', A Health Care System Critique

Spending more on health care can be bad for our health, according to Shannon Brownlee, an award-winning medical journalist and UC Santa Cruz graduate who has earned widespread kudos for her book about the nation's sprawling health care system.

In "Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer," Brownlee challenges common medical practices. She depicts an uneven delivery of medical services throughout the country that routinely makes unjustified costly promises without the science to back them up.

"There is remarkably little evidence to back up what physicians do," Brownlee said recently from her home in Maryland.

Named No. 1 Economics Book of 2007 by The New York Times, "Overtreated" has drawn the praise for its solution-oriented critique of U.S. health care delivery. It's also drawn fire. . .