Health Care – The Special Economy

Health care is a special sector of the economy. It shows stable growth, rapid innovation, and no crises. That is why it is envied by so many who are about to force changes.

In this respect, two tendencies can be observed.

  1. There are efforts to cut health care expenses.
  2. There are efforts to make more profit in health care.

Though it seems that both proponents push into opposite directions and, as ever, their competition can bring about progress, this might be not the case here, as both these efforts threaten to destroy the traditional structure of the health care system that proved so effectively in evading economical crises and instead to inflate the next economic bubble.

ad 1) Efforts to cut health care expenses are not new. They fit into the picture of overall competition among industries. While other sectors repeatedly suffer a decrease in demand, the need for health care is stable, and due to permanent scientific progress, it is even continuously growing. It’s more than understandable that other industries try to cut health care expenses, so that people have more money available to consume their products.

ad 2) Efforts to make profits in health care are not new either. This is nothing that has to be despised as all progress in our society depends on the people’s strive for profits, but there are some differences in making huge profits in health care. It can be a great bargain to sell pure water as an remedy to cure all illnesses for an exorbitant price, and you will always find some people stupid enough to buy. On the other end, every physician knows cases though not properly paid for you have to invest a great amount of money, work, and science to save one single patient. Fat  profits can be made in the former case only, and there already exists an uncountable number of such products, for instance vitamin and beauty pills, inoculation for a flu that will never come, lipid lowering drugs for people, who have no risk at all and so on.

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