Posted by guest blogger Mommynator.
(Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 here).
So let's move onto other contributing factors to the cost of healthcare in this country. The primary bed partners in this mess are the government, the insurance companies themselves, lawyers, doctors and patients. Did I miss anyone?
A Brief History of Medicine - The Good Old Days
Ah yes, the good old days of the family/community doctor, who delivered and buried just about everyone. He knew all the secrets and kept them all. He sat by your bedside, maybe even held your hand as you died, was considered wise and almost godlike in knowledge.
Trouble is, at the time this was true, doctors knew next to nothing compared to what we know now about anatomy, physiology, disease and treatment. They had limited tools and medications and procedures and sometimes the best they could do was offer palliative care. Maybe.
A small cadre of scientists started teasing out many of the secrets and complexities of the human body as the tools for observing and experimenting became better and more precise. Darwin's black box (originally referring to cells which were originally though to just be blobs) gave way to discovering the true complexity of each different type of cell in each organ system and tissue. It's true what they say - "I may not look like I'm doing much, but at the cellular level I'm very busy."
And discovering the chemistry of how everything works! Hormones, fluids, exchanges, balances and levels, electricity even - it can make your head spin at how complicated everything is.
With all these new discoveries came new treatments - medications, surgeries and other alleviative methods. We got aspirin, penicillin, saline, blood typing. Surgical procedures like appendectomies, tumor removals, repairs and modifications became more common with better outcomes and restoration of health.
Hospitals changed from places where obnoxious things were done painfully, mostly resulting in death to places of healing for the most part, and life. I remember my husband's grandfather refusing to go to the hospital because his experience in the late 1880s/1890s was that if you were admitted, you were dead. Nowadays, the majority of people who are admitted are released to at least partially restored health and life.
People with strokes can regain more than ever thought possible. Cancers can be persuaded to at least go into remission. Transplants can restore almost normalcy. Reattachments, microsurgeries, therapeutic plastic surgery and reconstruction. Prosthetics that really work. Therapies and medications that address neurological problems even to restoring chemical balances leading to depression. Medications that address many diseases people automatically died from in the past, most notably insulin and other medications for diabetics.
It's an amazing time we live in if we really think about it. But it comes at a cost. Somebody has to pay scientists while they do what they do. They have to buy and sometimes develop new equipment to carry out the research and eventual testing of new procedures and medications. And then comes the rubber-hitting-the-road moment of human testing and refinement.
All this scientific discovery also led to moral and ethical questions many of which we still struggle with to this day. When does life begin and end? To what extremes should we go to preserve life? What is the value of a human being and his life when there is an anomaly that cannot be cured? As much as scientists would like to sometimes, they cannot live, breathe and perform science in a neutral ethical environment.










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