22 September 2009
Heaven Was a Cheap Destination
A sensible approach to resolving America’s health care expense crisis is to promote primary care by reordering the incentives in the health care system in favor of keeping patients well rather than treat their acute and catastrophic illnesses. In order to incentivize health instead of disease care, patients need to be incentivized to lead long lives.
How can this be done? It’s not enough to identify the problem; solutions must be found. Those solutions have to motivate patients to put as high a value on regular fitness maintenance as on contending with interruptions in their physical well-being. Even if patients can be convinced of the effectiveness of that strategy for prolonging life, they will still have to decide that prolonging life is a rational goal.
There are two determinants of that decision:
(1) A long life has to be attractive to the patient, with enjoyable and stimulating activities, and
(2) The cost of living long must be affordable, so it is not a burden on subsequent generations.
Heaven was invented to answer these needs in the past. Now that medical technology has made it possible for individuals to outlive their economic self-sufficiency, we have to pay for heaven on earth.
A sensible approach to resolving America’s health care expense crisis is to promote primary care by reordering the incentives in the health care system in favor of keeping patients well rather than treat their acute and catastrophic illnesses. In order to incentivize health instead of disease care, patients need to be incentivized to lead long lives.
How can this be done? It’s not enough to identify the problem; solutions must be found. Those solutions have to motivate patients to put as high a value on regular fitness maintenance as on contending with interruptions in their physical well-being. Even if patients can be convinced of the effectiveness of that strategy for prolonging life, they will still have to decide that prolonging life is a rational goal.
There are two determinants of that decision:
(1) A long life has to be attractive to the patient, with enjoyable and stimulating activities, and
(2) The cost of living long must be affordable, so it is not a burden on subsequent generations.
Heaven was invented to answer these needs in the past. Now that medical technology has made it possible for individuals to outlive their economic self-sufficiency, we have to pay for heaven on earth.
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