0587 - Mediscare

The report from Anguilla is mixed: On the Tourist front the island is boiling with pale people, all happily following the U.S. weather reports on TV, with those computer generated dots of snow falling, and the price of oil rising. On the health front, somebody has brought varied strains of ‘flu to the happy isle, and many are laid low, including the OO, wheezing and oozing fluids. Meanwhile, the OO’s visitors include three kids. Have you noticed that kids these days have large vocabularies? The visitors do, with the 8-year old learning that the Anguilla elections can’t be more than 5 years apart, and asking sagely “That’s the maximum, what’s the minimum?” And, as in the States, the real estate market here is red hot, with construction everywhere.

Today’s subject is appropriate for one with the ‘flu. In the mail last week was a report from the Atlanta medical facility visited by the OO in the fall. Here were some major charges for the fancy tests taken. Carotid ultrasound, sir? Thallium stress test? Sonogram? All this, and accompanying lab work, not to mention medical fees, added to about two grand. What did the OO pay? Nothing so far, but a bill for a few pennies will eventually arrive. Medicare will pay – one of the few advantages of age. Well, the Administration has made a big phony fuss about Social Security as in crisis, while all it needs is some actuarial adjustment to account for the longer lives we seem to be living. Yet, the bigger problem is just surfacing and that is the enormous and rapidly rising cost of health care. Some projections are that healthcare will soon take up 40% of the GNP. The old-line major companies like GM look like nothing but health care plans for the aging.

Please do not be offended by the next few paragraphs. We speak fact, even though unpopular fact. One fact is that there are super-expensive new procedures and drugs, which are not efficiently provided by the system. Another, unpleasant, fact is that rich people somehow get more care (and also live healthier lives) than poor people. A more disturbing fact is that costs of the terminal weeks of illnesses are enormous. That over-litigated woman in Florida who has been brain dead for over 15 years must have cost millions to keep alive. So, if you look even at the most obvious facts, it is not going to be possible for everyone to afford the best health care. In other words, money counts, a lot. That is brutal and hard to take, but it is so.

Politicians, particularly you-know-who, despise making provisions (called taxes) for expenses they decree. So, who will pay? We are reliably informed that in Canada, all are eligible for care, but it is rationed by making the sick wait. If you are rich, you can not buy private care, so the Canadian rich go to the States or Europe. In England, we are told, health care is for all, but you can buy Harley Street experts. Our keen political judgment is that in the U.S. the people will not stand for making it illegal to buy care outside the free system.

So, what’s the result? Ration care? Make basic drugs free, fancier drugs payable? Do something about mandatory violent efforts to resuscitate the dying (whether or not they want the efforts)? The Pope is said to have a private floor of a Rome Hospital. Can we afford that for everybody? These are the crisis questions. Can you answer them? We thought not.

Next time: Gadgets [OO #588]

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

Home