Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially (2015)
In the book Antifragile Nassim Taleb cautions against medical care unless it's truly necessary.  He argues that since so many things can go wrong in a hospital (you could get sick from someone else, mistakes could be made, etc), only go if the benefits outweigh the risks.<p>And so if you have cancer, it's probably worth the risk.  But if you have something that could just go away naturally, that's got a higher expected value of positive outcome.<p>He is in favor of subtractive medicine - many harms are caused by adding such things as smoking, sugar, preservatives, etc, and instead of adding medicine or surgery, remove the elements that the body isn't evolved to tolerate and see if it heals itself.<p>He gives the example of how he hurt his back weight lifting.  The doctor proposed surgery.  He just waited and his back healed itself, and in a way that is now more robust than if he had had surgery.<p>As with all things, it's not a black and white kind of decision, but this mindset has worked well for me as a heuristic for health.