I have not had any personal experience along those lines. I tend to agree that stints are over-used. I was diagnosed with some blockage over ten years ago and my Dr. recommended drug treatment. In my case the drugs have actually had a theraputic effect.

To say that bypass does not extend life is going way too far imo. Whether it is overused would be debatable and I'll bet it would not be hard to find eminent people to argue either side.

My PCP recently had me have a colonoscopy. It is a very expensive procedure that is supposed to be preventive. My original thought was that it was just to spread the wealth but they found and removed 7 benign polyps, so perhaps they saved themselves an expensive cancer treatment later.

The kind of treatment you are talking about seems to be a matter of how comprehensive the private insurance is. People that have conservative HMO coverage similar to Medicare will not usually have access to those premium treatments and based on the NYT argument they don't need them.

There is a lot of resistance to HMO style treatment in the US but those who have it are encouraged to have preventive care and the thing you worry about is being eligible for the cutting edge treatments.

The bottom line is that U.S. healthcare could be better but it is not third world care and while some may lack care it is usually due to a dearth of information. I concede that annual checkups are not available to the uninsured but everything else from a bad cold to critical illness can and will be treated at medical centers

Also, I would wager that for every horror story you can find on U.S. healthcare, I can find at least one similar story from any country with public healthcare