Americans Are Spoiled Regarding Health Care

From Paul Kedrosky and Economist:
"I've said something like the following before, but never so succinctly:
The trouble with health care in America, says Muriel Gillick, a geriatrics expert at Harvard Medical School, is that people want to believe that “there is always a fix.” She argues that the way Medicare is organised encourages too many interventions towards the end of life that may extend the patient’s lifespan only slightly, if at all, and can cause unnecessary suffering. It would often be better, she thinks, not to try so hard to eke out a few more hours or weeks but to concentrate on quality of life."

TW: Americans are spoiled with many things but health care perhaps more so than others. Over time Americans have become more and more risk averse. Risk averse to the point of dysfunction. The never ending effort to reduce risk in personal lives pervades our society. Combined with the unwillingness to make challenging decisions like end of life, we have a health care system oriented towards infinite costs.

We deal with this climb towards infinity with indirect rationing (i.e. lots of uninsureds and underinsureds). Furthermore we watch take home paychecks stagnate as incremental income is diverted towards health care plans (either private or public plans). The status quo is inequitable and unsustainable.

We must make choices, some of them VERY tough. Our political system is the means by which to formulate those decisions collectively. No, no, no politics accomplishes nothing. Lets reform.