Time for a very unpopular opinion. There’s too much healthcare in the United States. Too much medical intervention in people’s lives.
I’ll start by acknowledging that the liberal science/university/industrial complex has pushed medical science so far in the past 70 years. It’s amazing.
If I’d been born in 1900, I’d be dead by now. Not just because I’d be 126 years old. Because the cancer I got in 2011 would have killed me probably by 2012. But it didn’t kill me. Partly because the science/university/industrial complex, encouraged and funded by the government, has poured a lot of resources into advances in cancer treatment.
It also pours a lot of resources into endless ‘studies’ that prove nothing. And into machines that cost medical providers so much to buy and maintain that what they charge for every single thing goes up permanently. Insurance companies and medical device providers make money, lots of medical practices don’t.
That science/university/industrial complex, funded by your taxpayer dollars, has also come up with amazing drugs that improved the lives of countless people and saved the lives of many.
It has also, as so many people have noted, led to an obscene proliferation of drug advertising and absolutely staggering pharmaceutical profits. The medical/science/university/pharmaceutical complex has gorged itself on American dollars.
It has also managed to make Americans, particularly elderly people, over-drugged. One of the most common causes of death in America is medical error. And one of the most common causes of medical error is drug interactions.
medical overload affects everyone
Over-drugging doesn’t have to be life-ending or life-threatening to affect people. So many of us are familiar with getting a prescription for one thing that causes side effects. Side effects treated with another prescription that causes different side effects that leads to another prescription that leads to…a shit-ton of pills and still feeling like shit.
And I haven’t even mentioned all the preventative drugs Americans are persuaded to take. Drugs to prevent heart attacks that haven’t happened. Drugs to stave off diabetes that people don’t have. Drugs to lose weight, prevent strokes, prevent osteoporosis and on and on and on.
Here’s something you don’t know about all those preventative drugs like statins.
They don’t work for most people. That is, they don’t prevent anything. Statins prevent heart attacks in about 10% of the people who take them. But no one knows in advance which 10% that will be.
So doctors are encouraged to give statins to everyone who might possibly benefit. Which means 90% of the people who take them aren’t getting any medical benefit. They may or may not be getting side effects. They may be on these drugs, and paying for them, for life! That’s public health!
That’s unapologetic public health. It benefits the total population. It may or may not benefit you. But you don’t know that. What you’re told is that taking a statin may reduce your risk of a major coronary event by 30%. And what you hear is that you’re gonna have a heart attack if you don’t take it and that your doctor wants you to take it.
This is the kind of thing that pisses people off and makes them go MAHA and distrust not just pharmaceutical companies but the entire American health care system. Which is not good.
Americans overtreated by the medical/scientific/industrial/government/academic complex suffer for it. It costs them a lot of money.
Over-Treatment Causes pain and distress
It costs them a lot of time. A lot of worry. Side effects. Unnecessary tests that cause pain and distress.
And do you know why Americans are overtreated?
Because they demand it. Because they are apparently terrified to live without all that overtreatment. Because they lobby for it. People don’t trust the medical/university/industrial/government complex so they actually want MORE treatment and tests because they think the medical system routinely makes harmful decisions based solely on money.
Which, it has been essentially proven, the medical system often does.
So people try to fight back by getting more medical intervention to counteract the effects of the medical intervention they think they’re not getting that they should, or the medical intervention they are getting that they think they shouldn’t!
And I haven’t even begun to address the role of insurance companies. What insurance does and doesn’t cover means you get overtreated and over-tested for some things, including things that you don’t need to be treated or tested for. But if insurance doesn’t want to cover your, I don’t know, radiation therapy to treat your cancer…. then you might be SOL when it comes to a disease you actually do have!
There’s an exasperated saying – Make it make sense! I can’t. No one can. No one on the entire planet can make the American health care system make sense.
So I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have to tell anyone to get pretty fed up with the American healthcare system because everyone who still has a functioning brain or even just a heart, still has a functioning heart, is already pretty fed up with the American healthcare system.
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