The Cost of Medicine... Is it really Inflation?

A loaf of bread costs a dollar or so today. Twenty years ago the same loaf of bread was a quarter. That is inflation!

I have had the privilege of practicing Medicine since 1971, before that, I was a "Resident" in at first Pathology, and then Urology for 6 years.

When I started my practice in 1971, medicines were $10-$20 at the Pharmacy, and an office visit was a similar cost. A vasectomy was $150. Not so today, but....
If you were unlucky enough to have advanced cancer of the testicle, with few exceptions, you just died. The same for Lymphomas, and Leukemia. Prostate cancer was rarely diagnosed at a curable stage; kidney cancer was likewise, often advanced when diagnosed, and incurable. If you had a kidney stone, you were likely going to be cut wide open, and miss 6 weeks of work(pay). Prostate cancer surgery, when feasible meant 6-12 weeks of convalescence.

There were few cancer blood tests, no CT scanners, no high tech minimally invasive procedures to cure you with minimal pain, and get you back to work(pay)in a short time. Kidney stones could not be lasered, blasted or manipulated with little or no morbidity.

There is essentially nothing that I do today to treat or care for my patient that I do the way it was done in 1971. Technology and knowledge in Medicine is proceeding at warp speed as this is written. If my wife continues to refuse to cook LUNCH for me, and my vigor continues, I am sure that the care I give 10 years from now will be enormously advanced over that today. That is, unless the travesty of Obama-care blows us back into the dark ages, as it will do as it is now conceived.

Research, fostered by that dirty capitalist term... PROFIT, will suffer, as will all of civilization, as Europe and the US slide into the gray abyss of Socialist meritocracy, as opposed to their forever enemy, Capitalist Meritocracy.

A loaf of bread is a loaf of bread! Do not let the mindless progressives get by with the complete mis-characterization of increased cost of the best product that Americans have: Medical Care.

Pray for the Republic
Avagadro602