The cost of 10 years

There’s  a very interesting article in the New York Times today about the rising cost of health care, specifically, the rising cost of health insurance.

David Leonhardt brings up a surprisingly good point: that the cost and effectiveness of medical care has gone up dramatically, and that it’s worth it.

Instead, a baby born in the United States this year will live to age 78
on average, a decade longer than the average baby born in 1950. People
who have already made it to their 40’s can now expect to reach age 80.
These gains are probably bigger than the ones the British experienced
in the entire millennium leading up to 1800. If you think about this as
the return on the investments in medicine, the payoff has been
fabulous: Would you prefer spending an extra $5,500 on health care
every year — or losing 10 years off your lifespan?

Now maybe I’m just a huge cynic, but let’s say you live those 78 years at $5,500 a pop - that totals about $429,000, which is a lot of dough. In fact, that would probably cover most of the “fancy medicine” that, on average, people would need for those last ten years of their life.

And you can get 1970’s medical care for $500 a year, right? So…why do we have to involve the insurance companies?

I guess, essentially, I’d agree with Leonhardt if I thought we were paying the price of our medical care, but I don’t think we are. I think that the corporate side of medicine is screwed uuup.

Anyways it’s an interesting article.