Medical care in the U.S. over-promises and under delivers. It costs about twice as much as in most other developed countries, but compared to them manages to produce only mediocre health outcomes. The profit motive has resulted in badly misallocated resources — too much testing and treatment for people who don’t need it and lousy access for many who do.
The impact of advances in medical science on the delivery of clinical care has also been over sold. The basic science revolution in medicine has indeed been brilliant, with powerful new tools yielding remarkable insights into how our bodies work. But translating this into better tests and treatments has been slow work and the practical benefits derived from all the brilliant science have been surprisingly disappointing.
There is a big disconnect between the daily enthusiastic reports of great new research results and the fact that treatment outcomes have improved only slowly and selectively. Clearest example — we have done a lot more to defeat cancer by dramatically reducing smoking than through the entire expensive forty year research war we have waged against it.
Certainly, we need to aggressively pursue medical research, but we also need to be realistic about the limits of our current understanding of disease processes and their treatment.
