Disease, Diagnoses, and Dollars

Kaplan (health services, U. of California at Los Angeles) takes a provocative look at preventive care in the United States. He argues that the current model, in which those with access to health care are aggressively screened for disease, is problematic for a number of reasons. Modern medicine is not well equipped to eradicate chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease and many will be better off not knowing about the diseases in their bodies, as treatment can cause problems that harm overall well-being. Furthermore, aggressive screening can also lead to unnecessary treatment. Aggressive screening also has negative public health consequences, he contends, in that it drives up health care costs for everybody, leading those that can't afford it without access to necessary treatments. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robert M. Kaplan is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health. He is also a Professor of Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He has been elected president of four different academic societies and has served as editor-in-chief for two major journals. Kaplan is the author or editor of 16 books and more than 400 articles or chapters. In 2005, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.