Can We ‘Fix’ Our Medical System?

In the interests of full disclosure, as they say, I happen to be married to the senior attending pediatrician at a teaching campus of the state (MA) medical school, This has given me the opportunity to observe and interact on a daily basis with her and her medical colleagues over the past thirty years.

That being said, back in 1963, the Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow published an article on the emerging medical market, his research provoked by the beginnings of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, which made the delivery of medicine a topic of public interest and concern.

Before I continue, it should be noted that the United States is the only advanced country with a medical system rooted in the free market, which means that for most of us, medical care is a pay-as-you-go experience, the good news being that any and all medical treatments for which the average patient is billed for is largely paid for by someone else.

This ‘someone else’ happens to be the insurance industry, which got into the medical market back in the 1950’s when the United Auto Workers (UAW) got a paid medical plan in their contract with the automakers, a fringe benefit which then spread throughout the entire Ameican workforce as a whole.

Of course, the companies which gave their employees medical coverage then turned around, went to D.C., and looted…