By Vincent F. Safuto staff writer
September 30, 2002
Godzilla lives, and he's wearing a stethoscope.
He's not ravaging Tokyo this time. He's found a far richer pasture: the U.S. economy.
It's my theory, and my fear, that one day the medical industry will devour our nation's entire economy. A once-productive nation that produced all manner of goods and services will be reduced to one big industry: medical care. Everything else will be a statistical blip.
Maybe we should change the United States' name to the Medicated States of America.
The irony is that while almost all of our economic activity may someday center around medicine, most of the citizens will not have health insurance or be able to afford access to health care.
I hope I'm exaggerating, but annual double-digit hikes in insurance premiums are our destiny for the next few years and perhaps beyond. And the shrinking number of Americans who have employer-based health coverage will have to pay more and more of the cost for fewer services.
That is, unless their employers give up because of the enormous cost, and simply stop offering such coverage.
Even worse, I've read of companies that have had to lay off workers because of the high cost of medical coverage. So they hit the daily double, losing their job and their health coverage. Nice deal.
And they end up using the emergency room as their primary-care provider, which means that the hospital has to make up its costs by raising fees to those who have insurance.
I sometimes wonder if this may be the reason so many American corporations are closing their operations and moving to Canada or India, countries that have national health insurance.
Part of the problem is the cost of people to provide care. That's not a dig against medical professionals, who should be paid well. But it just doesn't compute that medical people are being paid more and more to treat fewer and fewer people.
Recent news stories tell of coming shortages in health-care professionals, and that's the one field of work in which you have a fighting chance at a decent wage, though it looks as though any wage advantage over McDonald's will be negated by the cost of your own health benefits.
Projections say that America in general and Florida in particular will need tens of thousands of nurses in the future, not only to staff hospitals but also to train new nurses to fill future needs.
The other problem is drugs. All those wonder drugs relentlessly advertised have corporations behind them, companies that want to recoup their investment in research and development. The one-two punch of the high cost of seeing a doctor plus exorbitant fees at the pharmacy will pauperize much of the nation.
Maybe, instead of provider of services, the best job of the future is that of health-care executive.
Thinking about health care in America can make you dizzy. But before you think, check your health-insurance policy to see if you're covered for dizziness.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).
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