can we afford chronic illness

Kent Sepkowitz, a physician and writer, certainly cut to the bottom line in a recent Newsweek:

Equine Opportunity? It's time to face the facts on expensive medical treatments

While using Multiple Sclerosis as an example because it impacts the families of both US Presidential candidates, his point is with the cost of chronic illness. 

“Medicine has reached an odd moment when our cherished American innovation and ambition have given us products that we as individuals each would want, and probably demand, but that as a society we cannot afford… 

illustration by Mark Nerys

… This is not bad news, or a “crisis,” or a watershed moment in human history; it is a simple, quiet fact. Yet neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama (or any politician) seems prepared to say it… 

… Perhaps the time has arrived for us to grow up and face our mortality…”

While there is certainly truth to what he is saying I still believe ‘we the people’ first need to “grow up and face” why are these treatments so expensive?

The line between “American innovation and ambition” and profiteering is too blurred to even see what we can afford.

Caregivingly Yours, Patrick Leer 

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