When Isaac Newton uttered “What goes up must come down,” he was blissfully unaware of an entity that would stubbornly defy the law of gravity more than 200 years after his death: the American health care system. While the growth rate of health care costs has dipped to its lowest level in 50 years — whether due to Obamacare or the recession is open to debate — it is still going up.
What causes this inexorable upward trend? Politicians, pundits and medical experts trot out the usual suspects: greedy insurance companies, price-gouging drug manufacturers, waste and fraud.
Of course, the lifestyle police firmly believe that this country spends too much on health care because large numbers of our citizens eat too much, drink too much and don’t exercise. They think that if only there was a method whereby all the fat, drunken smokers would be forced to change their wayward habits, out-of-control expenses would surely plummet.
Reports that roughly 17 percent of the gross domestic product is consumed by health care causes great alarm among the cognoscenti. This figure is thought to be far too high. However, no one seems concerned about how much of our GDP we spend on travel and entertainment, or how much is gobbled up by the IT industry — which, for all its benefits, has also bestowed upon us massive data breaches, identity theft and near total loss of privacy.
No doubt there is greed, waste and fraud in the health care industry, as there is in any human endeavor, and it should be rooted out. But medical care is expensive for some quite legitimate reasons as well.
For one thing, the human body is a vastly complex organism. We are not muskets with just a few moving parts. The afflictions that beset us are as numerous as the stars in the sky, defying quick and easy cures. And the highly trained, skilled doctors and nurses who treat these conditions are not going to work for $15 an hour. Plus, miracle drugs do not fall like manna from the sky. It takes years and billions of dollars to bring a drug through clinical trials to market, and many fail to make it that far.
Hundreds of years ago, medical care was cheap because there wasn’t much of it, and what did exist was often unscientific and painful. People consulted with shamans and sorcerers who cast spells and concocted potions. Bloodletting and leeches were popular treatments. Or they would visit the local barber-surgeon for a shave, haircut and limb amputation. Today, thanks to technological advances in medicine, people who would have died 50 years ago now survive.
Another major driver of health insurance costs is the powerful human instinct for self-preservation. Most people want very much to live, and they want to be as free of pain and disability as possible. Anyone who has suffered a chronic, painfully debilitating disease can attest to just how miserable life can be when good health is lost.
Of course, no one writer, in one column, can possibly address all the issues besetting our health care system. But a good starting point would be an accurate (not inflated) determination of reasonable, proper medical expenses. Major drug companies are not going to suddenly emulate St. Francis of Assisi and give away all of their worldly wealth. And there is no way we can have a modern medical system at a medieval price point.
Reach Teresa Keegan at tkeegan@ecentral.com.
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