Toward Better Health

One of the most expensive factors in the escalating cost of medical care is the heavy burden health care professionals are forced to absorb by having to practice defensive medicine. Tests that are not medically necessary become so out of an abundance of caution not so much for patient care but to insulate the provider from possible future litigation. Malpractice insurance becomes a huge expense for those in the medical field also necessitated by fear of lawsuit. Only a handful of lawmakers in Congress are or for that matter, have ever been doctors, but virtually every Congressional delegation is chock full of lawyers. So it is with state legislatures as well, attorneys crafting law that ends up feathering their own nests. This domination of the process of government extends to our President, a lawyer and also has adverse consequence for business which has to vet everything through counsel and insure itself against tort claims. The litigious climate forces up the cost of everything, but until legal laymen replace lawyers in large numbers in the law-making process, this will never change. I saw a warning printed on my airline peanuts, "this product may be produced at a plant that makes or processes peanuts." I never would have guessed.