First, let’s get a little historical perspective on American health care. To do that, let’s move on to the American civil war era. In that war, slaughter date and tactics posed by weapons of modern era combined to cause terrible results. Most of the deaths on both sides of a war that is not the result of actual combat, but for what happens after a battlefield injury inflicted. To begin with, the evacuation of the wounded to move with a snail’s pace in most cases causing severe delays in the treatment of the injured. Second, the most targeted injury-related injuries and amputation surgery and this often results in large infection. So, you might survive battle wounds only to die at the hands of medical providers who either intend to intervene often quite deadly. High mortality can also be derived from everyday illnesses and diseases in the absence of any antibiotics. Total in something like 600,000 deaths occurred from all causes, more than 2% of the U.S. population at that time!
Let’s jump into the first half of the 20th century for some additional perspective and to bring us into more modern times. After the civil war there are steady improvements in American medicine in both the understanding and treatment of certain diseases, a new surgical technique and in medical education and training. But for most of the best doctors who can offer their patients is “wait and see” approach. Treatment can deal with broken bones and perform risky surgery and the like (now increasingly practiced in a sterile surgical environment), but drugs are not yet available for dealing with serious illness. The majority of deaths continues to be the result of treatable conditions such as tuberculosis, fever, pneumonia, measles and red and / or related complications. Physicians are increasingly recognizing the condition of the heart and blood vessels, and cancer but they do almost nothing to treat this condition.
This is a very basic understanding of American medical history helps us to understand that until recently (around 1950) we were almost no technology that can be used to treat serious illness or even smaller. No one treats you with the means that a visit to the doctor if at all exiled to the emergency so that the scenario that the cost is obviously very small. The second factor has been the main driver of today’s health care costs is that the medical care provided is paid for out-of-pocket. No health insurance and health insurance certainly is not paid by others such as employers. The cost is the responsibility of the individual and may include some charity supported charity hospitals for the poor and destitute.
What health care insurance should be done with health care costs? The impact on health care costs are very large. When health insurance for individuals and families emerged as a means for companies to escape the wage freeze and to attract and retain employees after World War II, almost overnight there is a large pool of money available for health care. Money, as a result of the availability of billions of dollars of health insurance pool, encouraging Americans to increase efforts to innovative medical research. As more and more Americans become uninsured not only through private, employer-sponsored health insurance but through increased government funding that created Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits of expanded health care, finding a cure for almost all things have become very profitable. This is also the main reason for a broad array of treatments available today. I do not want to convey that this is a bad thing. Think of the tens of millions of lives that have been saved, extended and made more productive as a result. But with growing funding source current magnitude (hundreds of billions of dollars each year) upward pressure on health care costs are inevitable. Offering physicians and most of our requests and gain access to the latest technology available health care, drugs and surgical intervention. So there is more health care to spend our money and until very recently most of us are insured and the cost of most covered by a third party (government, employers). This is the “perfect storm” for health care costs higher and higher maintenance and by and large, the storm increased.
At this point, let us turn to the key question. Is the current trajectory of U.S. health care spending is sustainable? America can maintain the competitiveness of the world when 16%, to 20% of the gross national product spent on health care? What other industrialized countries spending on health care and even close to these numbers? Add the political and election year and the whole problem would be very chaotic and misrepresented.
I believe that we need a revolutionary change in how we think about health care, availability, cost and who pays for it. And if you think I said we should arbitrarily and drastically reduce spending for health care you’d be wrong. Here is a fellow-citizens – health care spending needs to be preserved and protected for those who need it. And to free up dollars for us who do not need or can delay or avoid need to act. First, we need to convince our politicians that this country needs sustained public education taking into account the value of preventive health strategies. This should be a top priority and has worked to reduce the number of U.S. smokers for example. If prevention is to hold, it is reasonable to assume that those who need health care for many chronic lifestyle diseases generated will decrease dramatically. Millions of Americans have this disease much earlier than in the past decade and much of this is due to poor lifestyle choices. Changes alone will free up a lot of money to deal with their health care costs that need treatment, whether due to acute emergencies or chronic conditions.
Let us go deeper in the first edition. Most of us refuse to do something about the implementation of basic health strategies into our everyday lives. We do not exercise but we offer many reasons. We do not eat properly, but we offer many reasons. We smoked and / or drink alcohol to excess and we offer many reasons why we can not do anything about it. We do not take advantage of preventive health check ups are seen in blood pressure, cholesterol and weight readings but we offer many reasons. In short we ignore these things and the result is that we give up much earlier than necessary for chronic diseases such as heart problems, diabetes and high blood pressure. We wind physicians access to this and more routine matters because “the existing health care” and somehow we think we do not have a responsibility to reduce our demand on it.
It is difficult for us to hear the truth but it’s easy to blame the sick. Maybe they should take better care of themselves! Well, that may be true or maybe they have a genetic condition and they have become the unfortunate through no fault of their own. But the point is that you and I can implement measures personal disease prevention as a way to dramatically increase access to health care for others while reducing costs. It is far better to be productive by doing something we can control and then shift the blame.