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The
Root Causes of Healthcare Dysfunction
Shaun Kerry, M.D.
Diplomate,
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
When
we hear healthcare reform discussed, it
is usually centered around the subject of some sort
of economic plan to pay for those who can't afford
treatment. You may have noticed that I
haven't addressed that issue. |
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This series of
web sites deals with the root causes of social dysfunction. A
root cause, as I use the term, is a misperception
or blind spot that underlies the more visible
causes that most people, often erroneously,
see as the primary problem. Correcting
a root cause costs nothing, and in fact saves
enormous amounts of money.
We have established that
our healthcare system is the third leading cause
of death. Based on that, one could make the
argument that the harm the system does cancels out
at least a large part of its benefits. When
you consider that Americans spend about $1.3 trillion
dollars annually (1) on healthcare, we can easily
draw the conclusion that we're not getting our money's
worth.
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Some of this runs very
much counter to conventional wisdom, but if
conventional wisdom were correct, we would have already
solved the problem. One reason I don't take a position
on who should pay the bills is that that is an ideological
question that I feel should be left for the people to
decide. We also have scores of economists working
on the problem, but they are at an |
impasse because of the astronomical costs involved.
When
I entered medical school, I had the
wish that I would learn magical healing
powers. It was very disappointing when I discovered
that I could only cure a very small percentage of the
sick people that I encountered. I find that people
in general want to believe that doctors have powerful
treatments. That's why they bestow
doctors with a title. But in order to cope
in the real world, we need to be realistic. I
know a lot of sick wealthy people that can attest to
the fact that money can't buy health, and sick poor
people that believe that if only they had enough money,
they would be cured.
Of course this is all relative,
but it is this social delusion that is the basis
of the heavy emphasis on the high priority our society
places on trying to come up with paying for existing
costs, rather than addressing the reality of our low
cure rates, high incidence of medically induced injuries
and deaths, and exorbitant costs.
1. Levit,
K., Smith, C., Cowan, C., Lazenby, H., & Martin,
A. (2002, January/February). Inflation spurs health
spending in 2000. Health Affairs, 21(1), 172-181.
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