Marty Makary on Low-Value, Unnecessary Care: warns against

Dr. Marty Makary warns of an “epidemic of hardware” in spine surgery and other low-value procedures. At his September 28, 2026 American College of Surgeons lecture, he named low-value care as one of the four major problems in healthcare and argued that internal transparency of outlier data can avoid “millions and millions” in unnecessary procedures.

Makary’s stated reasoning is that when surgeons are shown their own data — how their rates of hardware use compare with peers — unnecessary procedures fall. He frames this as a data-and-transparency solution to a problem that harms patients and wastes money.

This is Makary’s position, attributed to him — not medical advice.

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.