As Alex Tabarrok puts it, “More people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS and yet physicians still resist and the public does not demand even simple reforms.”50 Such simple reforms might include •Regulating catheter use. Studies have found that death rates plummet when doctors are required to consistently follow a simple five-step checklist.51 •Requiring autopsies. Around 40 percent of autopsies reveal the original cause-of-death diagnosis to have been incorrect.52 But autopsy rates are way down, from a high of 50 percent in the 1950s to a
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