Americans tend to equate more tests and more aggressive treatment with better quality care. This approach does result in more expensive care. The US spends more on health care per capita than any other country in the world. But we lag behind other industrialized nations on important measures of public health.

Many of our assumptions about modern medicine are driving up costs and covering up potential downsides to medical interventions. Dr. Gil Welch, a leading analyst of health care policy, challenges these assumptions. In our conversation, he explains why we shouldn’t buy in to the ideas that it’s better to fix a problem, sooner rather than later, and that there is a pill for every ill.

H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, is professor of medicine and community and family medicine at the Dartmouth Institute and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He is also adjunct professor of business administration at the Tuck School of Business and adjunct professor of public policy at Dartmouth College.

His books include: Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why; Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health (with Lisa Schwartz, MD, and Steven Woloshin, MD); and his most recent: Less Medicine More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care. You can watch a seven-minute video about the seven assumptions he addresses here.

The podcast of this program will be available the Monday after the broadcast date. The show can be streamed online from this site and podcasts can be downloaded for free.

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