I recently read this interesting and timely book. The author seems to be saying that many times, "less is more"--that here in the US we are doing too much for our health and survival sometimes.

Atul Gawande, MD, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2014). The book deals with the end-of-life experience rather than the tendency to overprescribe drugs that a person could get along without but he makes some important points.

Dr. Gawande is in favor of more knowledge about when to back off, when to let a patient live out the remaining time in peace, without having to endure the many hospitalizations and ICU stays, surgeries and other procedures that are so often part of a seriously ill person's life towards the end.

He also stresses that sometimes the patient would prefer palliative care to the more drastic measures that could be taken to save his life, but the family, in their zeal for keeping their loved one alive as long as possible, manage to overrule that preference.

He's not saying that people should opt for euthanasia or anything of the sort. He is saying that nowadays high-tech medicine makes it possible to prolong life but it's in ways that don't add up to life as we think of it, and there are times when it would be more merciful not to resort to those procedures even though they are available.