Sunday, January 22, 2012

Don't Let Medicare Undermine the Health of Future Generations!

Zeke Emanuel, who is becoming the national educator-in-chief about health care in his new role at the University of Pennsylvania, preaches an excellent sermon in today's New York Times - "What We Give Up for Health Care."

Zeke's point is obvious, but, amazingly, it's one our political process has been oblivious to: what we spend on health care we can't spend for other purposes. That creates an ethical imperative to consider opportunity costs for health care expenditures. The proper question is - "does this health care expenditure create more human benefit than other possible expenditures?" - rather than the one we typically ask - "does this health care expenditure produce any benefit for the patient, no matter how small the benefit or how high the cost?" Zeke shows how health care costs have acted as an economic cancer, invading and obliterating investments we would otherwise make in wages (which have been stagnant or declining), education, and other crucial components of our lives.

As important as medical care can be, income and education are also crucial determinants of health. When we reduce wages to pay for health insurance, and reduce educational investments at every level to pay for Medicare and Medicaid, we're reducing overall health and well-being. The real "death panel" is our reflexive investment in medical interventions that produce minimal or no benefit at the cost of investments that would do more for us!

Zeke argues that "liberals" should be as concerned about health care costs as "conservatives" are:
There is an inevitable trade-off between rising health care costs and things liberals really care about, like access to college and good wages for working Americans. We cannot have it all. The health care reform act will help us save — mainly by changing how physicians and hospitals are paid and delivering better care to our most expensive patients. But more can be done: for starters, we could speed up the implementation of payment reform, stop Medicare payments for tests and treatments that provide no benefit and endorse competitive bidding for medical goods and services.
The premise of this blog is that many of us in the Medicare age group - whether we're "liberal" or "conservative" - share a concern about the future, and don't want current Medicare expenditures to undermine the health and well-being of future generations.

Avoiding overtreatment, and the moral imperative to consider opportunity costs, should be our relentless advocacy focus!

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