Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is 43%
Health care costs too much – and it’s defective. A simple office visit can cost $300 – and the doctor stares at a computer. A delivery costs $20,000, and there’s a 1 in 3 chance the obstetrician will perform a Cesarean Section –and around half of these could be avoided. EpiPen costs $600, and pharma-bro Martin Shkreli increased the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill.
Further, a substantial portion of the feel good news stories about new research turn out to be early reports – which are often not borne out by further research . Few news stories give a full reference to the original research, and many are downright misleading.
I’ve been working 2016-17 academic syllabi over the weekend – and I found these two charts in a Commonwealth Foundation report from last fall comparing health care across multiple countries. This shows that the likelihood of dying of heart disease in the US has dropped by 43% from 1994 to 2013 -and the likelihood of dying of cancer has dropped by 17% from 1995 to 2007 (These figures are age adjusted – which is only fair, since the ultimate mortality rate of humans remains 100%).
So- we have every right to complain about the expensive, impersonal, and downright wasteful care that we get. Much of the improvement in heart disease mortality didn’t come from the medical world (like statins for cholesterol and angioplasties for heart attacks), but came from the public health world (the dramatic decline in the use of tobacco products). The same could be said for cancer deaths. We should be skeptical about news reports about the latest cure for cancer.
Still – there is a lot less premature death from heart disease and cancer – and the medical system and the pharmas have had something to do with this. Let’s celebrate.
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