| Today's Managing Health Care Costs Number is 3 |
Grand Canyon at sunrise, last week
I've been on vacation - visiting the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion Canyon - so no posts over the past week
And what a week it's been.
It's easy to miss the action going on in the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act with the reality TV show style announcement that the US will leave the Paris Accords. We should not discount the possibility that Mitch McConnell will go right and push a bill that would leave tens of millions uninsured and eliminate the market reforms incorporated in the ACA . More on that in the coming week.
But I want to talk about the impact of climate change on health - and health care costs in the US. The US is the third country to reject the Paris Accord on climate change. (The other two are Nicaragua which felt it didn't go far enough, and Syria, where there are other preoccupations. It's a depressing group to align the US with.
Paul Krugman wrote on Friday that "it’s quite possible that lower health care costs would all by themselves make up for the costs of energy transition, even ignoring the whole saving-civilization-from-catastrophic-climate-change thing."
What are the potential implications of global warming on health care (and health care costs)? A few thoughts
- Global warming has decreased hard frosts -so that mosquitos are traveling further from the equator, and tick infestations are in effect during more of each year. This is already leading to moose deaths in the upper midwest and Maine -and is likely to lead to more Lyme Disease, West Nile Virus, Zika, and even malaria in the US.
- Bigger and less predictable storms have led to additional loss of life - and also loss of capital investments. Hurricane Sandy caused over a billion dollars in damage at NYU Medical Center alone. We'll end up with nice shiny new hospital buildings -and decades of bond payments baked into future medical rates.
- Droughts are associated with more civil instability - and some believe that the current Syrian war is related to a multi-year drought. The health care implications of that war are devastating far beyond Syria. Half of the 22 million residents of Syria are displaced -and 5 million have fled to other countries. Source
- We are so close to eradication of polio - but the countries that have residual polio are Syria, Somalia, Pakistan and Nigeria. All have insurgencies or wars, that are potentially linked to climate change. Polio is a humanitarian crisis in developing countries, and would clearly be a humanitarian and economic crisis if we import this into the US.
- Many attribute the worsening outbreaks of Ebola to climate change as well. Source
- Rising sea temperatures can increase cholera outbreaks.
- 739 people died in Chicago during the heat wave of 1995 - global warming could well increase likelihood of such dangerous heat waves.
There's a more complete list of health impacts of climate change from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (2010). It hasn't yet been purged from the federal government's web site- download it while you can!
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