Health Care is a more complex issue than Politicians' Campaign Slogans

As usual, it is discussions of Health Care in this country that have me sitting here typing.

I could comment on how without Medicaid serving the poor we would have (i) Alzheimer's Patients wandering the streets tying up EMT people and ER's when they collapse in the street or bankrupting their children,  and (ii) poor people going without medical care until they ended up in the E.R. without any ability to pay and the hospital having to give them service under a Federal Law passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan.  Of course, the cost of that is passed onto all of us with Health Insurance through higher hospital bills.

I have to admit that having had 1st hand experience with Medicaid and an Alzheimer's Patient, I recognize both the expense it represents to the system and the conflicts present in deciding what generational support arrangements and obligations there should be in place when there are children to do so.  But that complex issue does not have any bearing on what to do with people who have no children and have dementia.

But what really got me to sit down here was the FDA approval of a new drug for men with advanced stages of Prostate Cancer.  This drug will cost $7,450 per month and extends the life of its average taker from 13.6 months to 18.4 months.  I know that while men are taking this drug it will encourage the drug researchers to investigate whether variations on it will extend life further or even potentially cure the cancer and there is value in that.  But is $134,500 in incremental pharmaceutical expense ( and I am sure there is more expense than that for this regime) worthy when life is extended by 5 months?

If that allows a 55 year old man to see his grandson born or his youngest daughter married or sell his business so his wife has funds or any number of other reasons, perhaps.  But couldn't a lot of this be accomplished anyway without spending $3.7 billion on this drug for the 28,000 men that die annually from Prostate Cancer?

The difficult question is how do we manage the cost of end of life care in an intelligent manner?  How do we promote the discovery of drugs that help people continue life while we do not spend money on things that only continue life for a matter of months?  The Medical System and Politicians must figure out how to answer this question.  Otherwise, healthcare is going to either bankrupt the system or leave people dying in the gutters as they did in the Middle Ages.