Looks like someone else picked up on the prostate overtreatment issue:
A kind of odd piece of conventional wisdom has hardened that it’s dishonest of Barack Obama or Matt Yglesias or anyone else to suggest that there are some free lunches to be had in the realm of health reform. I think it’s clear that you can’t do public policy on a major issue entirely with free lunches, but realistically the policy realm is full of low-hanging fruit and free lunches. The only reason to think it wouldn’t be would be an odd assumption that we reached near-optimal policy on all topics sometime around 2007.
In the health care domain, in particular, a mix of weak science, bad economic incentives, and poor mathematical understanding leads to a fair amount of over-treatment. And over-treatment for cancer isn’t just an issue of spending money that didn’t need to be spent—treatment for prostate cancer normally has very unpleasant side effects and it’s really cruel to inflict it on men who don’t actually need the treatment. And as far as cancers go, that’s totally typical. Reducing over-screening and over-treatment would probably save money (though it’s always hard to know what the long-term impact will be since everyone eventually gets sick and dies) and will definitely spare patients a lot of pain and suffering. (bolding mine)
What is really difficult to deal with is the anger one faces when they suggest that a procedure may be too much, or that the science behind a procedure is not completely sound.
The free lunch crowd seems to have decided that medical procedures don’t have trade-offs both in terms of costs and health outcomes so any suggestion that a procedure is not needed will usually be met with anger. Think back to when a few groups were suggesting that people could skip a few mammograms. As long as we continue to view health care as a commodity that should be consumed like any other commodity, that is to consume as much as possible, the U.S will have problems with our health-care system.