American Health Costs Outweigh Benefits: A difficult lesson

When my Dad had his second serious heart attack at age 83, the doctors quickly encouraged him to have bypass surgery. The day before the surgery, I was visiting him when one of the social workers interviewed him about his emotional state . He answered every question with an assurance that he had completed his life work. After surgery, he was in intense pain. He did not have the strength to recover. He died within a few weeks. Certainly, the open heart surgery hastened the end, but at a cost, both to him and to the HMO. I wished I had written to the hospital to suggest that an in-depth emotional questionnaire would have found that he didn't have the will to push through the pain of recovery. He would have lived longer, in less pain, if he had been treated for congestive heart failure by less invasive methods, but that treatment does not pay out big bucks from Medicare. If we made more use of psychological help rather than surgery, we might see better outcomes. marymiche@jps.net

I, probably like most people who know little about health care, have always equated cost-cutting for hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies with dangerous declines in quality in a sector already seemingly lacking in funds. Learning about areas in which health care costs outweigh the benefits is truly eye opening. Thanks for sharing your personal story. It is certainly a complex issue and a potentially curious one to raise at this point in time given our national economy, but I trust our president at least to be transparent. And in this issue, transparency of costs and benefits seems truly important in identifying ways in which our system can be altered. Keep up the good work!