12 August 2009
Diagnosing Our Healthcare System’s Faults
A major fault of the U.S. healthcare system is that it fools consumers into believing that their health is best cared for when the most expensive diagnostic tests and therapies are devoted to curing their illnesses. It’s a false analogy to buying an expensive automobile in order to avoid early obsolescence or wearing away. Every American should have the right, this model posits, to have the longest life possible (whatever the quality of that life), no matter what it costs.
Dr. Andrew Weil, in his August 9, 2009, Huffington Post article, “The Wrong Diagnosis,” pointed out that the Obama Administration may be misdiagnosing our system’s faults as owing to the high prices charged by pharmaceutical, testing and treatment suppliers instead of to the selection of the solutions appropriate to specific health conditions. That may be the result of the cost of defending doctors against their legal liability for the medical consequences of failing to recognize the symptoms of a remotely possible accurate diagnosis. The romance of this perception of the medical profession is depicted in the popular TV series, “House, MD.”
The media has wondered about the supposed alignment of the pharmaceutical industry behind the Obama healthcare insurance reform plan. It may be because the industry has decided that any plan that assumes that money is the solution to the problem can’t help but line their pockets. The fault of the U.S. healthcare system is not that it costs individuals too much, but that in aggregate it costs the entire economy too much. If we were able to correct the incentives that lead to selecting the most expensive solution to each health care need, we might bring down the overall cost of ameliorating our longer and longer lives.
A major fault of the U.S. healthcare system is that it fools consumers into believing that their health is best cared for when the most expensive diagnostic tests and therapies are devoted to curing their illnesses. It’s a false analogy to buying an expensive automobile in order to avoid early obsolescence or wearing away. Every American should have the right, this model posits, to have the longest life possible (whatever the quality of that life), no matter what it costs.
Dr. Andrew Weil, in his August 9, 2009, Huffington Post article, “The Wrong Diagnosis,” pointed out that the Obama Administration may be misdiagnosing our system’s faults as owing to the high prices charged by pharmaceutical, testing and treatment suppliers instead of to the selection of the solutions appropriate to specific health conditions. That may be the result of the cost of defending doctors against their legal liability for the medical consequences of failing to recognize the symptoms of a remotely possible accurate diagnosis. The romance of this perception of the medical profession is depicted in the popular TV series, “House, MD.”
The media has wondered about the supposed alignment of the pharmaceutical industry behind the Obama healthcare insurance reform plan. It may be because the industry has decided that any plan that assumes that money is the solution to the problem can’t help but line their pockets. The fault of the U.S. healthcare system is not that it costs individuals too much, but that in aggregate it costs the entire economy too much. If we were able to correct the incentives that lead to selecting the most expensive solution to each health care need, we might bring down the overall cost of ameliorating our longer and longer lives.
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