A fascinating discussion that addresses its audience both as potential patients and

as citizens at the beginning of the Clintons' push for a nationalized health-care system.

What Dr. Wennberg studies is not so much "overmedication" as the appropriateness of

one treatment as against another, and the extrinsic factors in prescription: "The chances

of having bypass surgery if you live in New Haven are about twice that if you live in

Boston, whereas about 75 per cent more people with arthritis of the hip end up with

surgery if they live in Boston than if they live in New Haven"--just because of the biases

of the respective teaching hospitals. JEW: "Do you prefer the risks and benefits associated, say, with surgery compared to the risks and benefits associated with drugs?

They're very different, and the differences are subjective, and it requires the involvement,

the engagement of the patient in the decision process--which essentially flips Western

medicine upside down in terms of the traditional roles between the doctor and the

patient."