The Doctor Weighs In

Brian Klepper

Big Think - a VERY interesting and worthwhile site, so if you haven't seen it yet you're in for a treat - has two very cogent health care comments, both by colleagues I admire tremendously. One has noted bio-ethicist Ezekiel Emanuel MD  talking about why universal health coverage isn't the only solution to the health care crisis. (Sound familiar? ) Zeke has this to say about the way American health care works:

"Well medicine in the United States, I think, faces a real disaster in its delivery system.  We know that we're not delivering care well in that we can't reliably guarantee Americans will get quality care when they enter the hospital.  That, in fact, it's almost a 50/50 flip of a coin for people, whether they get the right care or the not right care.  That is a disaster.  And to change the system to make sure that delivery is better, and that we're really doing better by people and actually doing it efficiently is a huge challenge at the moment...We can't sort of fix a little here and a little there.  I don't even think getting all Americans ensured is a solution...That's one small element, but we actually have to control costs."

And here's Anthony Fauci MD, the Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, talking about the logic of prevention.

"We need concentrate a lot more on being predictive, and preemptive, and preventive; as opposed to waiting until someone gets sick, and going through the pain, and the suffering, and the expense of taking care of so many sick people is to try and shift the balance of how medicine and the health profession interacts with the public to try and anticipate.  And we'll get the tools for that - each year that goes by with molecular diagnoses; understanding the role of certain types of habits in disease; understanding the genetic makeup of someone - to make medicine more personalized, more predictive, more preventive and preemptive so that you can actually prevent, or at least forestall many of the things...[I]f you look at how much it costs to try and prevent someone from getting sick by lowering their cholesterol, watching their blood pressure, making sure their diet is right, avoiding smoking and things like that, the amount of money that it takes to get those things in effect balanced against the enormous expense of taking care of someone with a very serious disease that leads to their death until there's no contest.  It's much, much less expensive to try and prevent it." 

See Dr. Emanuel's video comments on Big Think here, and Dr. Fauci's here.