The American Health Care System: Saving Us or Killing Us?

Paper Summary:

In this paper the author looks at the American health care system highlighting from the beginning that medical error is the 5th leading cause of death in America at the moment, ranking higher than diabetes and accidents. The author gives examples of cases where poor judgement and general medical error have led to deaths that could have been prevented. The paper proceeds to discuss the unnecessary deaths caused by overuse or misuse of medical drugs. Finally the paper concludes that doctors are neither miracle makers nor gods, and the public cannot hold them accountable when they make every effort to use their best judgment; they are simply humans like the rest of us. If their conditions were better a lot of the errors could be prevented.

From the Paper:

"This problem aside, the next argument focuses on the groups that were used to calculate the data. Opponents argue that the data was calculated on the premise that most patients admitted to hospitals have high disease burdens and are high death risks even before they enter the hospital; that those patients selected for chart review in the Harvard study were a high severity group and would of course reflect a higher mortality. Unfortunately, this misses the point completely."

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