The Cost of Not Caring
Medical CareOur current discussion of medical care is mostly about how much care costs and how many trillions of dollars more it will cost if we take care of the uninsured. There’s no doubt that making medical care available to everyone will have significant costs but we’re not talking nearly as much about the very real costs of not caring. Taking good care of diabetics is much less expensive than preventable diabetic complications like amputations, kidney failure, and blindness. Many costly ER visits could be avoided if people had access to primary care doctors. The uninsured don’t just go away when they get sick; they get sicker and sicker and ultimately require more and more expensive care which we all end up paying for.
Diabetes and other diseases affect the patient’s family and community as much as the patient themselves. Unpaid medical bills are the number one reason families go bankrupt. Bankruptcy often leads to family breakups and homelessness. Living under bridges and on the street leads to vast reservoirs untreated hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV, addiction and mental illness that affect us all. We’re already paying for the care of the uninsured. Good medical care can’t prevent or cure all of these problems among the uninsured any more than it can for the rest of us, but access to care can and will make a significant dent. Dents that add up is what medical care and science are all about.
No one knows what the true costs and benefits of extending care to the uninsured will be but we should also bear in mind that care will also involve significant savings. My optimistic hunch that creating more effective medical care will drive down costs and displace much of the too little, too late, very expensive care we currently provide to the uninsured. It’s what most of the world does. Most of the rest of the world is able to provide high quality universal health care at a much lower cost than we do. It’s worth a try.
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