Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Redefining Medical Necessity: A Consumer-Driven Solution To The U.S. Health Care Crisis, Ryan Abbott, Carl Stevens

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The American health care system is plagued by high costs and poor public health outcomes, due in part to the overuse of costly diagnostic tests and treatments. In 2009, the Institute of Medicine estimated that unnecessary care wastes $750 billion, equivalent to about 30 percent of health care spending. Moreover, overtreatment can directly harm patients as a result of surgical complications, drug toxicity, and hospital-acquired infections. Yet while the problem of medical waste has long been recognized, solving the problem has proven elusive. In part, this difficulty is due to perverse economic incentives for physicians and hospitals, which still primarily …