WASHINGTON (June 7, 2010)--More medical care won't necessarily make you healthier and it may make you sicker, although that’s a notion that technology-loving Americans find hard to accept.

Texas author Liza Ely had lined up hospice care for her 93-year-old mother, Verna Burnett, as she lived her last days with Alzheimer's and heart failure, but when Burnett developed an irregular heartbeat, the care provider at her Tyler, Texas, nursing home recommended that she see a cardiologist, to have a tube threaded through blood vessels to her heart to check it out.

"We were speechless,” Ely said.

“We asked what could be done if something showed up on the test." The response? "Nothing, really."

Anywhere from one-fifth to nearly one-third of the tests and treatments we get are estimated to be unnecessary, and avoidable care is costly in more ways than the bill: It may lead to dangerous side effects.

It can start during birth, as some of the increasing number of C-sections are triggered by controversial fetal monitors that signal a baby is in trouble when really everything's fine.

It extends to often-futile intensive care at the end of the life.

In between, Americans get the most medical radiation in the world, much of it from repeated CT scans.

Too many scans increase the risk of cancer.

Thousands who get stents for blocked heart arteries should have tried medication first.

Doctors prescribe antibiotics tens of millions of times for viruses such as colds that the drugs can't help.

As major health groups warn of the limitations of prostate cancer screening, even in middle age, one-third of men over 75 get routine PSA tests despite guidelines that say most are too old to benefit.

Millions of women at low risk of cervical cancer get more frequent Pap smears than recommended; millions more have been screened even after losing the cervix to a hysterectomy.

Back pain stands out as the No. 1 over-treated condition, from repeated MRI scans that can't pinpoint the trouble to spinal surgery on people who could have gotten better without it.

About one in five who gets that first back operation will wind up having another in the next decade.