Advocates for Evidence-Based Health Policy Speakers
The First Wealth is Health
What are we missing out on? What else might we spend that money on? From a personal standpoint, I would like to pay for college for my sons. And I would like them to go to the school of their choice. If I buy everything I get offered by the healthcare industrial complex my personal healthcare costs may limit that college expense. From a national perspective, when we spend more and more on healthcare it means less and less for education, bridges, parks and bike trails, and train tracks.
Even with healthcare reform there may be . Even more don’t get adequate primary care or benefit from our extensive evidence-based preventive care services. A lot of patients get unnecessary back surgery and drug eluting coronary artery stents, take pills that don’t help, go to free-standing emergency rooms, or use unproven medical devices.
Source: Commonwealth Fund
All the while, our societal “commons” needs attention. The “commons” is that collection of cultural, public, and natural resources that should be accessible to everyone in our society. It includes clean air and water. And in our 21st century it includes access to safe streets, roads, airwaves, literature and art, parks and recreation. I believe the “commons” should include education, public transportation, and, yes, healthcare.
While we may spend more and more on healthcare, Americans continue to struggle to access that very same care.
More money, less health, and for fewer people.
Healthcare in America has, for the most part, been a private good; like a home or an automobile. As a nation we attempted to make healthcare more accessible to economically disadvantaged and the elderly through Medicaid and Medicare. But for the rest of America, healthcare has been an expensive commodity, affordable to some, but unaffordable to millions.