I Have Some Silly Questions

BY KIM BELLARD Last year I used some of Alfred North Whitehead’s pithy quotations to talk about healthcare, starting with the provocative “It is the business of the future to be dangerous.”  I want to revisit another of his quotations that I’d like to spend more time on: “The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.”  I can’t promise that I even have intimations of what the totally new developments are going to be, but if any industry lends itself to asking “silly” questions about it, it is healthcare. Hopefully I can at least spark some thought and discussion.   In no particular order: Why do we prefer to spend money on care when people are no longer healthy than we do on keeping them healthy? The U.S. healthcare system well known for being exorbitantly expensive while delivering rather mediocre results.  Everyone laments it but we keep throwing more money into the system that is producing these results.  We’d be smarter to invest in upstream spending.  Like making sure people get enough to eat, with foods that are good for us.  We’d rather spend money on diabetes or obesity drugs rather than addressing the root causes of each disease.  Or like making sure the water we drink, the air we breathe, the things we eat, aren’t polluted (how many toxins or microplastics have you ingested today?).  Not to mention reducing poverty, improving education, or fixing social media.  We know the kinds of ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Policy Healthcare Kim Bellard US Healthcare system Source Type: blogs