DEFINING HEALTH AS ILLNESS:

Preventive Care is a Sick Idea (David Harsanyi | June 24, 2009, Reason)

[A] government policy that prods people into incessantly visiting medical offices for checkups, screenings, and tests will only raise costs even further. According to studies, preventive medicine thwarts little, though it does mean early diagnoses for relatively harmless ailments—and treatments for them.

As H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy, contends: "Recent expansions in the definitions of diabetes, high cholesterol and osteoporosis defined millions more as suddenly needing therapy. A new definition of 'abnormal bone density' ... turned 6.8 million American women into osteoporosis patients literally overnight."