Why is Health Care So Expensive?
Published Dec. 4, 2019, 12:45 p.m. by djl
What we call 'health care' is actually 'patient care', as it deals with patients rather than people's health. A patient may not have much bargaining power when his well-being or life is at the mercy of others. The Inner Canon of Huang Di (黄帝内经) , an ancient Chinese medical classic, says that:' The superior doctor prevents illness. The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness. The inferior doctor treats manifested disease.' There's a progress that diseases or any problems form and develop. It's most expensive to treat diseases that have fully developed and it damages human body even if the disease is cured. It's best to prevent it from happening, which is most effective and does least damage to health. Everyone knows that good hygiene, healthy diet, quitting smoking, etc, will help prevent a lot of diseases. But it requires determination and discipline. Most people tend to 'live in the moment' and underestimate any future potential risks, until the day they find it's too late. Many do not realize that their seemingly 'personal' habits and hence higher risks covered by health insurance is ultimately paid by others. Instead of being grateful for those 'superior doctors' with preventive insights, many people would reject, boycott and even hate them, viewing them as making trouble out of nothing. For example, it took decades to outlaw smoking worldwide. Therefore, a large proportion of today's huge cost of health care is what people pay for their or other's myopic hedonism and stubborn ignorance that let preventable things happen.
Though prevention is better than cure, not all things claimed as 'preventive' is good, effective prevention, and there're different levels of prevention itself. The best prevention should be dealing with the real root causes of the disease or problem. For example, some might say aging is the root that causes diseases. Then why some people live much longer than others and have good health? Some might say genetic defect and damage causes diseases. Then what causes genetic defect and damage? Does gene editing deals with defective and damaged genes or with the root cause of genetic defects and damages?
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