Ivan Oransky: Are we over-medicalized? (TED)

Ivan Oransky, health editor for Reuters, has noticed a lot of preconditions in health care: prehypertension, pre-dementia, pre-anxiety, etc. He has his own term for these preconditions: preposterous. “You all have a universally fatal condition. It’s called pre-death,” he joked during a talk in April. “Every year we’re spending more than $2 trillion dollars on health care, and yet 100,000 people a year are dying not because of the conditions they have, but because of the treatment that we’re giving them.” When visiting the doctor, Oransky says our culture isn’t content unless we get the test, get the pill. Oransky suggests that tackling every malady that comes along like a terminal disease may not be the most effective approach.