Death and Money

In BC the cost of medical care is going up. Why? Technology usually reduces costs. I can see three reasons:

• You spend the half your lifetime medical budget in the last year of life. We have found ways to keep people barely alive indefinitely, but very expensively.
• Doctors use expensive equipment routinely even when it is not necessary.
• Patent law allows drug companies to keep upping the price of drugs.

So what should we do about it?

• We should stop putting roadblocks to people wanting to avoid that last year of life, its expense, its discomfort.
• We should put a nominal user fee on expensive procedures like CAT (Computerised Axial Tomography) scans to discourage frivolous use.
• We should not allow drug companies to patent a drug that is merely a trivial variation on an existing drug. It must be truly novel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)