>We’re at a crux where medicine has progressed to the point where we can perform miracles, but it’s too cost prohibitive to get those miracles to everybody. The only way out is to drive costs down.<
And therein lies the huge problem. I have a friend who developed T1 diabetes when she was 50. She’s on a pump and the cost is mind-boggling. I’m not sure how our society would go about driving the costs of the supplies down, except with subsidies. And, looking at how subsidies have driven the cost of things like college and hospital costs at large, I think we’re at an impasse. Price fixing would make manufacturers limit their output, which would be catastrophic for patients.
The only answer that I can see is innovation and competition.
The problem is that this is usually done with a ‘trickle down’ effect.
Example: VCRs. When they came out, they were unbelievably expensive. Poor people could never afford them at that time. So the rich bought them and that demand pushed forward competition. Gradually, the middle class got in on the game, then the poorest. (My mom’s friend spent more than $1000 on a VCR back in the early 80’s. I bought one in the late 90’s for $15 at Walmart for the kids’ room.)
The issue with medical innovation is that we simply cannot deny people treatment to up the demand in an effort to naturally push innovation. Chemotherapy and insulin are not like a VCR.
So the gov’t subsidizes and keeps the price up. Drug and tech companies go to the gov’t for protectionist status to keep the money flowing in.
Prices are not going down because there’s no need to drop them.
When I gave birth to my daughter in 1991, the cost of an uncomplicated natural vaginal birth was $2,500. Now it’s more than $18,000 on average.
That’s comparing apples to apples. The same service. Back in 1991, it wasn’t unusual for people to pay for their child’s birth out of pocket. Now days, it’s unheard of.
The cost of my son’s insulin doubled over ten years. (The actual cost of the pump did go down as it became more common, but the sets and other equipment did not.)
Our compassion is killing innovation and competition, but I can’t see a clear way out of it.