So, here’s what I’ve been thinking lately.
We all have to die, right? Really. We cannot live forever, even if we think we can.
So no matter how good we get at health care and taking care of ourselves, we are all going to die of something. And there will always be a “#1 killer of women” and a “#1 killer of men” for us to be afraid of.
And a cause to fight or a new drug to sell or a headline to scare us or funding that is needed from the government for treatment and research.
So when does it stop?
I mean, what happens when we’ve cured cancer and found the perfect statin or perfect diet? What will we do when the word “plaque” only refers to a thing you get to hang on your wall ? Or when diabetes is discovered to be from a virus and we get the vaccine, and when stem cells make Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s obsolete…will there be anything left to die from?
Or will we all live forever?
And if we don’t live forever, how long will we all live? To 120 years old? 150?
At that point, will there be a group of people who are living to 150 and still look great but a whole lot of people will still be dying at 95 from heart disease because they can’t afford the best health care?
But that’s already happening, isn’t it? Just on an earlier scale.
I mean, here we are, just plowing ahead curing everything right and left, leaving many of us to live longer and longer while women and children are dying at young ages from thing like malaria, measles and infant diarrhea. Diseases we in the developed world left behind in the history books years ago.
Really, really think about that. While we sit here worrying about which statin to take because we won’t get off our fat ass to exercise, kids are dying all over Africa from malaria. And malnutrition.
That’s because there’s no master plan. There’s no prioritizing where the money is going on a worldwide basis.
Now I know those laisse faire capitalists out there are saying “Leave it alone. Let it evolve. It’s working, just not at the pace everyone wants it to. And not equally everywhere, but give it time. We’re figuring it out…”
But are we figuring it out? Or are we just figuring out best how to make money doing it?
Because if it’s really all about making money, then we should not be surprised that we spend so much on it. And we should all just shut up and spend the money and see where it takes us.
But we really don’t want to spend the money, do we? We want our cash for other things, like I-phones and HDTV and oil guzzling minivans and movie downloads.
Of course we can’t say that, so we talk about the uninsured and the poor who can’t afford health care.
But really, how much would it cost for us just to take care of those folks? Not much compared to what we are paying overall for health care we would rather get for free so we can spend our money elsewhere. And certainly pennies compared with the billions we spend trying to hang onto every last second of life because we really haven’t come to terms with the fact that we all have to die. And that if that death happens to be unexpected, it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone did something wrong and we have to find someone to blame.
How many times have I heard people speak these words – “Why haven’t they found the cause of … yet?” or “Someone has to have figured this out by now” or “”How come they don’t know …?”, all spoken with the expectation that it’s someone’s responsibility to have figured these things out, and if it’s not done, then by god, someone’s not doing their job!
All of which leads to lawsuits and raises the costs of health care even further.
Or do I have it all wrong? Maybe health care costs so much because the system isn’t free market enough. After all, the price of most things goes down with time – like I-Phones and laptops. But health care just keeps getting more expensive.
Maybe the answer is to just set the beast free. Get rid of insurance companies and go back to the days when folks just paid the doctor. Then who knows what health care would look like? Maybe I’d become obsolete because someone else has figured out how to deliver health care more cheaply.
Uh, oh. This though thought train is taking a turn I don’t like. I think I’ll stop now.
