Medical Care is a Successful and Growing Industry, not a Liability

americanthinker.com
By Wesley Clark, MD
September 03, 2009

The people of the United States find themselves in the midst of a severe recession, with unemployment higher than it has been in many years, housing prices cratering, retirement plans collapsing, and their lifestyles constricting.

The financial industry collapsed. We had to come to the rescue, pouring our own futures into saving the banks, brokerages, and insurance companies from their own greedy foolishness. The stagnant American automobile industry was imploding, and the people had to bail them out too, further mortgaging the future of their children.

Our politicians responded to this catastrophe by spending our future for us, and then by voting a $787 billion dollar "stimulus" bill that has so far produced no discernible improvement, but has flung pork into every corner of the nation, while funding their community organizer and special-interest groups. The government -- the State -- now effectively owns several giant banks, investment bankers, AIG, and two out the three domestic auto companies that were failing dismally.

There is still an industry that is growing and successful, that produces 17% of the Gross Domestic Product, and that employs over 10% of all American workers. The medical industry incorporates more than 820,000 businesses: hospitals, physician's offices, dentist's offices, home healthcare services, kidney dialysis centers, medical laboratories, X-Ray imaging centers, radiotherapy facilities, mental hospitals, physical therapy centers, nursing homes, outpatient surgical centers, dental laboratories, rehabilitation facilities and ambulance services with combined annual revenue of over $1 trillion. It immediately plows most its growing income right back into the economy for wages, and directs additional business to satellite industries such as pharmaceuticals, drugstores, and insurance companies. It even produces billions of dollars in revenues for the medical malpractice trial lawyers. Americans medical care costs more than government programs elsewhere, but it provides better care and better results, the best in the world. American patients, even the destitute, do not give birth in hallways, or wait months for essential diagnostic tests and treatments.

Suddenly, it seems that brisk industrial growth, creation of new technologies, expansion of employment, healing of once-fatal illnesses, prolongation of life, and prevention of pain are not even success, but a just terrible fiscal burden that our overlords deeply resent. They want that money to spend elsewhere, for monuments to their narcissistic prowess.
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