I know an 18 year old girl who has been getting chemo for arthritis for a couple of years. Yearly cost is over 200k.
Ugh... that really sucks. The point that whatsleft makes, however, is: is chemo really _worth_ $200k per year or are those costs really the result of the implementation of our system?
See, we have a huge problem:
We have a system that is based on the market:
1. You pay for services as needed. If you can't pay, you don't get services because the dollar value of the service is a function of supply and demand.
2. Regulations demand that ALL people be treated, regardless of wealth, because our morals dictate that everyone has a right to medicine (whether this is clearly defined constitutionally, is irrelevant. The reality is that the system, for the most part, acts on this premise)
3. Because demand outstrips supply, due to the rule that all must be treated, costs go up. This results in the need for insurance companies, entities that collect your cash for theoretical "safe-keeping" by tying your money up into other investment instruments and funding your care in the event you should need them.
4. The existence of insurance companies and the overhead they impose creates further price pressure, resulting in exaggerated inflationary effects over time.
5. Finally, insurance begins to become unaffordable in order to maintain profitability and payouts to claimants, so many cannot afford even basic health services -- but all the while, we're still adhering to item 2.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
So, the problem lies in one of two places:
1. The idea that an individual's health should not be impacted by his or her ability to pay for necessary medicine
2. The market-based, insurance model
It simply boils down to which one of these two things we, as a society, can live without.
Of course, the market-based insurance model will ultimately fail, mostly because its statistically stupid to attempt to "insure", at a profit, against that which is undoubtedly inevitable. Your house may or may not be destroyed in a hurricane, you may or may not wreck your car in the next 30 years, but you're damn sure going to need medical treatment at one point or another.
Problem is, while I believe the choice is obvious -- whether to deny care or to ditch the market-based insurance model -- I think, as a nation, we're so broke, we might have to give up on both.
