Hundreds of years ago, medical care was cheap because there wasn’t much of it, and what did exist was often unscientific and painful. (Associated Press file)
Re: “Truly, health care isn’t going to be cheap,” Aug. 9 Teresa Keegan column.
The Wall Street journal recently reported on two consumer services that had most outrun inflation in the past 45 years: health care and college education.
Not coincidentally, these are the two costs that government works hardest, or at least loudest, to help us with. It taxes us, then it gives us credits or subsidies to buy these services, all the while proclaiming its desires to help more of us obtain them and to help us with the costs.
How has that worked out for us?
Steve Baur, Westminster
This letter was published in the Aug. 16 edition.The medical system as we know it was invented by the U.S. government with passage of the first Pure Food and Drug Act in about 1915. The per-capita expenditure for health care was less than $10. In less than a generation, medical care became so expensive that the populace jumped at the offer of “free” medical insurance as an employment perk during World War II.
As a total creature of government, medical care closely resembles education especially insofar as it appears to be immune to the laws of economics. Costs always increase in both areas and they always eclipse the general inflation rate.
And don’t be so quick to cast aspersions on those blood-letters and shamaans of yesteryear. The current medical system is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S.
James Landauer, Denver
This letter was published in the Aug. 16 edition.
