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- For people who had been awaiting the rollout of the Affordable Care Act in order to obtain health insurance for the first time, the major problem associated with American healthcare has been a lack of access to it. But for a surprising number of Americans, the greater problem may be exactly the opposite: They are receiving too much healthcare. And that’s not good news for either their wallets or their physical well-being.
The most recent estimate from the Institute of Medicine is that about 30 percent of total healthcare expenditures in America go toward unneeded care. Doctors, too, have acknowledged the problem: In a 2011 survey published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 42 percent of American primary care physicians said that patients in their own practice were getting more care than necessary.