Medicine we can live without - this won't hurt a bit

When the White House and Congress were struggling last year to keep the cost of health-care reform from exploding, they got most of the industry to ante up. Pharma agreed to give up $80 billion in revenue over the next decade, hospitals kicked in $155 billion in foregone Medicare and Medicaid payments, and medical-device makers grudgingly agreed to a $20 billion tax. But one big player refused to put any money on the table: doctors. The American Medical Association pledged to support health-care reform only if its members' incomes didn't take a hit. That doctors demanded protection for their wallets strikes Howard Brody, a family physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch, as "ethically questionable," and not only because he thinks doctors have a moral obligation to help get the nation's health-care bill under control. The bigger problem is that "doctors rip off the system with inappropriate care," says Brody. An estimated one fifth to one third of U.S. health-care costs, at least $500 billion a year, goes toward tests and treatments that do not benefit patients"routine CT scans in the ER, antibiotics for colds, Pap tests for women who do not have a cervix, and …