Healthcare crisis?

Something has to be done about the rising healthcare costs in America. The root of all evil, as usual, is the love of money. Healthcare is a for-profit industry. The desire to get as much money from the sick has led to obscene investments in drugs and medical technologies. Simply speaking---we suffer from too much innovation. Government has to do something about it. Let me use a real-life story to illustrate the point.

My wife has Type 1 diabetes. As a child her doctor labeled her a disgrace for socialist Bulgaria and a burden for its working people. Somehow she survived three decades of socialized healthcare. A few years ago she moved to America and got pregnant. Her condition was out of control for a couple of months. As a result some of the blood vessels in her eyes were damaged. The doctors used laser surgery to stop the bleeding. The procedure cost us hundreds of dollars. Without those profit-seeking entrepreneurs in the healthcare business, we would have spent just a few bucks on a walking stick.

When the time came for our child to be born, we went for a routine ultrasound. The doctor measured my wife's blood pressure and got concerned. The urine and blood tests showed that she was developing a preeclampsia. We were rushed to a hospital. My wife was hooked to a very expensive machine to monitor her and the baby's conditions.

Several hours later the doctors came to a conclusion that the only way to save the baby was a cesarean section. The procedure, developed and perfected without a doubt by greedy money-lovers, cost thousands of dollars. Our daughter was born prematurely and needed more special care. Because she survived the ordeal, we now have to spend even more on immunizations, antibiotics, and the occasional X-rays for soccer injuries.

And to think that all of this insanely conspicuous spending on healthcare could have been avoided! How? If only there was timely government intervention to discourage the pharmaceutical monsters from the mass production of Dr. Banting's invention for the market. . . . Problems costing hundreds of thousands of dollars could have been buried in a tiny coffin in the mid-1970s.