OK Corral
for release 05-12-05
Washington D.C.
If I had lived in the Old West, I imagine myself as a Doc Holliday sort of character, a failed tubercular dentist gambler/gunslinger who swigs laudanum and has a financial interest in the local whore house. Ah, those were the glory days of medicine, when the only anesthetic was a slug of whisky and a leather strap clenched between your teeth.
But we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. The healthcare industry, as we collectively refer to our modern day sawbones, is a massive and complicated and expensive racket. Powered by the dual dynamos of the insurance and drug companies, the industry has grown to gargantuan proportions. As our aging population desperately clings to life, we are willing to spend larger and larger proportions of our assets to avoid the discomforts of old age and to postpone our inevitable appointment with death.
Our nation is now spending about $1.75 trillion a year on healthcare, or 15 percent of gross domestic product. It consumes one-fourth of the federal budget, more than defense. Canada's national healthcare system only consumes about 10 percent of GDP and Canadians live longer on average than Americans.
The single largest reason for the escalation of our doctor bills in this country is the sheer unbridled greed of the pharmaceutical companies. They protest that their research and development expenses are astronomical when in fact most of that research is done by the government and besides the dope companies spend much more on promotion and marketing than they do on R&D. There is almost one drug sales rep for every doctor in the US. They manufacture a new pill that is magenta or shaped like a triangle and then they invent a disease that it will cure. Tune into the evening news sometime. Step right up. It's the medicine show. Doc Holliday would have recognized it immediately.
And then there is the technology. When Doc Holliday took a bullet out of a cowboy's shoulder he probably had no more technology than a hand-stropped razor. Now a doctor won't even think about making a diagnosis before he puts your body through a four million dollar MRI machine. Every time they invent a new medical torture or technique the cash register rings.
When Doc Holliday was diagnosed with TB, the medical professionals of the time told him that he had six months to live. He died fifteen years later. Medicine has advanced since then. Yes, it's nice to be spared the reaper's scythe by some new drug or technology, but we all know that it's only temporary. The House always wins in the end.
My partner wanted me to go to the doctor for a check-up several months ago. I told her that there was only one way to get me to a doctor. Break my leg. I don't trust doctors and I don't trust a system that is sucking our economy dry.
Is this a symptom of our cultural or human condition? We all know we are going to die. It's just a matter of sooner or later. But we hate this notion. It used to be that a person with kidney failure would be blessed by death. Now they have to endure dialysis or having a pig's kidney transplanted into their body. You can enjoy catheterization or respirators stuck down your throat or radiation or chemo where all your hair falls out and tubes and needles inserted into every orifice or if you don't have enough orifices they will tear you a new one. i've always wondered what the rewards of longevity are? The only answer that I've been able to come up with is--more old age and sickness.
The Poet's Eye drips a nostalgic tear for the days when men were men and doctors were more like the helpful and compassionate guy on Gunsmoke than the bureaucrats that they have become, enthralled with their insurance money line and their drug company sponsored golfing junkets. If I ever catch a bullet, I'm going to Doc Holliday. He had nothing to lose.
"Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a gun that I ever knew."--Wyatt Earp, 1896
