The victims, not surprisingly, are women, children and the poor

From The Well Body Book by Michael Samuels (notes I took some 20 years ago):

Getting what we need from the health industry begins by not accepting what we don't need. first on the list is unnecessary surgery ... about 17% of all operations are unnecessary -- 3.2 million operations / year, 16,000 deaths, $4.8 billion. The reasons are clear enough: the nation has too many surgeons, surgery pays better than other medical work, the doctor who decides the operation is needed gets paid for doing it (under fee-for-service system).

The victims, not surprisingly, are women, children, and the poor. Hysterectomy is what surgeons like to do to women; almost 700,00 performed in 1975, resulting in 1,200 deaths, depending on who's making the estimates were avoidable. As a Baltimore specialist said: "Some of us aren't making a living, so out comes a uterus or two each month to pay the rent."

For children, the leading unnecessary operation is tonsillectomy; the classic example is the doctor who, when one kid shows up with a sore throat, schedules all the children in the family to have their tonsils out on the same day.

As for the poor, a 1975 study found that Medicaid patients are operated on at 2 1/2 times the rate for the rest of the population. Here greed is not the only factor: the poor provide most of the patients for teaching hospitals and there just aren't enough sick organs around to supply the practice needed by interns and residents in surgery.

SECOND OPINION -- And what of the poor surgeons already in surplus? He might make his living as a consultant, giving opinions about surgery instead of wielding the knife, ESPECIALLY if he can convince the health insurer of the need for a third opinion -- the tie breaker. In the case of Cleam Caldwell, a D.C. Metro tunnel worker who had contracted silicosis and then been fired for "unreasonable questioning of safety on the job," all Caldwell had gotten as compensation was $750 plus an offer of reinstatement in the same hazardous place.