Now that the Affordable Health Care Act is set to go into its actual, real-world administration, we are about to learn the true meaning of cost. The cost, unfortunately, will be America losing the best health care in the world. Maybe it's too late to bring this up, but costs in medical care that led to a justifiable panic are explainable. Fortunately for us, cost issues can still be ameliorated in a reasonable way. We must acknowledge the factors that drive up costs and address them.
Not that many generations ago, doctors and hospitals were not that well-paid. Indeed, not that long ago, doctors had little to offer the sick in terms of treatment, justifying their poor remuneration. Nurses were much more valuable to the sick and dying. Then something dramatic and unintended happened. In an effort to avoid inflation, the federal government set wage controls in the 1950s. Businesses, in an effort to attract good employees, began offering health care benefits. Our population was relatively young, our habit of going to the doctor for any illness didn't yet exist, and insurance companies became flush with cash. This led to a "cost is no object" attitude in the attempt to discover new treatments for all of the world's maladies.
A brave new world of medical evaluation and treatment options opened up that continues to this day. The pay for doctors that are specially trained skyrocketed, and justifiably so. Cure rates for previously incurable diseases increased proportionally. Hospitals were now a place where you didn't just go to die; you had a great chance of surviving and returning to a functional life. American pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers, with their innovation and resultant success, became the envy of the world. We have benefited tremendously as a society as a result.
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