Money, Medicine, and the Cosmos (An Essay Tangentially Related to Diabetes)

By Scott Coulter Our government is officially closed for business, at least for now. Hopefully, it's a relatively short closure and not the beginning of a long road toward complete atrophy in Washington. The cause of this closure is, theoretically, health-care reform. In truth, that's actually stating things too literally — the real issue here is a battle of ideologies that's been decades in the making and has found its focal point in the health-care debate. But let's take it on its face value for a moment. The health-care debate comes down to money. The conservative viewpoint has always been that a free-market system encourages innovation. This claim can't be dismissed — the quest for profit has certainly spurred forward a great many medical innovations. The liberal viewpoint is that money should not be part of the equation when it comes to medical research, at least not the primary driver. This claim can't be dismissed, either — I read an article recently in which researchers were lamenting the fact that a great number of vitally needed vaccines aren't produced, and a number of research queries aren't pursued, because there's simply not enough profit in them. The health-care law brings this debate to the fore. The new law DOES have elements of socialized medicine, though it is a far cry from a truly socialized system of insurance. It is still a free-market-based system of private companies vying for consumers' money. The key differences are the individual...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs