01 October 2010
The High Cost of Thinking Your Health Is Worth Everything
We all have heard the words of sympathy and encouragement from relatives and friends, “Your health is everything.” Our medical care providers have heard them as well. Unfortunately, they commonly take those words even to give license for insulting behavior towards patients when it comes to their other obligations in life, like making a living, caring for their loved ones, or budgeting their expenditures.
Extremely long waits in doctors’ offices are among the most frequent examples of this attitude. A much more consequential example is often the selection of the costliest remedies for patients’ infirmities. Gone are the days of the proverbial prescription, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” The irony of modern medicine is that our increased ability to diagnose what ails us has classified many more of us as sick. Moreover, it has multiplied the cost of treating those ailments with ever more sophisticated pharmaceuticals and devices.
It is an anomaly of modern medicine that it has made it possible, when expense is not an issue, to postpone death beyond a period of enjoyable living in order to avoid facing its irreversible termination. Treatments for sufferers of terminal illnesses are often judged by the number of months they are likely to extend the individual’s life. Apparently, if his own funds are not adequate, that individual has the right to use Medicare funds to add a minimal percentage to his longevity on the credit of future tax payers.
No one questions the right of a wealthy person to try whatever it takes to live forever at his own expense. Does equity require that society also make those extreme measures available to the less well-off? Even the wealthiest patients might choose to use their resources in some other way. Equity does not entitle a poorer person to undertake a humanitarian program in a forsaken part of the globe. But when it comes to prolonging his own existence, does society owe him the resources to make the attempt?
These are questions that need to be answered if the nation wants to resolve its health care dilemma. It won’t be simple or free of political risks to arrive at a solution. It’s not clear that ObamaCare has placed us on the right path. But, at least, it has gotten the discussion going.
We all have heard the words of sympathy and encouragement from relatives and friends, “Your health is everything.” Our medical care providers have heard them as well. Unfortunately, they commonly take those words even to give license for insulting behavior towards patients when it comes to their other obligations in life, like making a living, caring for their loved ones, or budgeting their expenditures.
Extremely long waits in doctors’ offices are among the most frequent examples of this attitude. A much more consequential example is often the selection of the costliest remedies for patients’ infirmities. Gone are the days of the proverbial prescription, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” The irony of modern medicine is that our increased ability to diagnose what ails us has classified many more of us as sick. Moreover, it has multiplied the cost of treating those ailments with ever more sophisticated pharmaceuticals and devices.
It is an anomaly of modern medicine that it has made it possible, when expense is not an issue, to postpone death beyond a period of enjoyable living in order to avoid facing its irreversible termination. Treatments for sufferers of terminal illnesses are often judged by the number of months they are likely to extend the individual’s life. Apparently, if his own funds are not adequate, that individual has the right to use Medicare funds to add a minimal percentage to his longevity on the credit of future tax payers.
No one questions the right of a wealthy person to try whatever it takes to live forever at his own expense. Does equity require that society also make those extreme measures available to the less well-off? Even the wealthiest patients might choose to use their resources in some other way. Equity does not entitle a poorer person to undertake a humanitarian program in a forsaken part of the globe. But when it comes to prolonging his own existence, does society owe him the resources to make the attempt?
These are questions that need to be answered if the nation wants to resolve its health care dilemma. It won’t be simple or free of political risks to arrive at a solution. It’s not clear that ObamaCare has placed us on the right path. But, at least, it has gotten the discussion going.
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