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Health Habits: Prevention's Your Only Choice

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: Smart industry observers have been worrying about looming shortages of doctors and cures ever since the beginning of the "health care reform" debate in every western nation. The progressives, of course, ridiculed such worries as unfounded. But last month's edition of "Cancer" magazine reports the shortages are real, and they're already upon us....

Health Habits: Prevention's Your Only Choice

"Reform" Already Creating Cancer Treatment Scarcity The whole idea behind state-run socialized medicine is to make sure nobody gets anything that somebody else doesn't get. (Indeed, that's the goal of the progressive movement toward collectivism in general.) That's a change for Americans. Thirty years ago, maybe your grandpa lived a longer life with more vitality because he could afford the best cancer treatment available; meanwhile, mine couldn't, and he didn't. I remember many of us in the late "baby boomer" generation watching cancer ravage our folks and thinking it couldn't happen to us - because great new cures and smart new doctors were arriving on the scene every day. Eventually, free market capitalism, with all its inequities and "unfairness," would produce a medical system that improves quality and lowers cost-of-treatment for maladies such as cancer. Sure, there'd still be rich grandpas and poor grandpas, but from top-to-bottom, the cancer treatments available to all grandpas would be better. A higher percentage of grandpas would be able to get excellent treatment previously reserved only for the rich ones. Why? Because of the profit motive. If the bright young aspiring pharmaceutical researcher (or doctor) might get rich doing it, she's going to work hard to create the next great cure for cancer. But progressive politicians have figured out that they can make you mad about the whole rich-and-poor thing. You're not poor because you didn't work hard or have a brilliant entrepreneurial idea; no, you're poor because The Man is keeping you down. So their solution, for which (unfortunately) they've been able to gather some support from a vocal minority, is to take the medical system into the government's hands, where it can be monitored and purged of inequities. In other words, all grandpas will have access to exactly the same cancer treatments. But it'll be the one my poor grandpa got... not the one that saved your rich grandpa's life. Why? Because fewer bright young people are going to aspire to find the next cancer cure. Doctoring and researching are HARD work, requiring long hours and lots of self-sacrifice if they are to produce excellent outcomes. Many well-intended progressives point out that people become doctors because they're altruistic to begin with, and that's true... but to stay with it long enough to create the next great solution to problems as thorny as cancer, the best-and-brightest need more motivation than to be locked into a career of hard work as a government employee who can never break through the ceiling of a GS-whatever making less than six figures a year. Better to turn that sharp brain toward designing the next great video game instead. You can still get rich doing that (though, eventually, progressives would like to change that, too). Smart industry observers have been worrying about looming shortages of doctors and cures ever since the beginning of the "health care reform" debate in every western nation. The progressives, of course, ridiculed such worries as unfounded. But last month's edition of "Cancer" magazine reports the shortages are real, and they're already upon us. A report in the journal says a shortage of cancer doctors, as well as rising costs of everything from x-rays to radiation and chemotherapies (you didn't really think costs would go "down" when the market started to anticipate the government's control, did you?) are making quality cancer care increasingly hard to deliver. By 2020, when many of the late baby-boomers will be in the middle of the scary cancer years in America, "Cancer" reports the shortage of cancer-treating oncologists will be between 2,350 and 3,800, which translates to somewhere between 9.5 and 11 million FEWER office visits. People will still get cancer, though. And unless the "reform" is somehow reversed, the brighter future wherein more patients can get the rich-grandpa treatment for their cancer will be set back at least a generation. And that's just a lot of bad, scary news for those of us who'll be in that government-medicine "window" - in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I'm sure today's bright young doctors (and the wise older ones) will do their best, and if cancer treatment gets generally worse, it won't be their fault. We poor grandpas can blame it on the ashen-grey hand of public administration, rationing care and deepening the very medical problems it purports to solve. But it won't do us any good... we'll be just as dead, just as soon. Gloomy? Sure. But the new generation of rich grandpas will be the ones who take personal responsibility for their vitality now, before they become most vulnerable to cancer (and other tough ailments). The new rich grandpas will be the ones with health, even more than those who've amassed wealth. So refocus now on your health habits, especially the five key habits I call "The NEWSS" - Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sleep, and Supplements. You can't personally keep the government from screwing up the medical system, but you can do a lot to keep yourself out of it. The old expression "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure" is still in effect, but the numbers need to be inflation-adjusted: "Better pile on pounds of prevention, because by the time you need it, you won't be able to find even an ounce of cure... at any price."

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Article Tags: government takeover, health care reform, health habits, personal responsibility



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