Good health begins with individual decisions

By Dr. Deane Waldman. Dr. Deane Waldman, MD, MBA, is a retired pediatric cardiologist and director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the nonprofit Texas Public Policy Foundation. Excerpt:

"Without doubt, the U.S. health-care system has huge problems. We are spending twice what others are spending, can’t afford it, and not getting value for what we spend. There is both fraud and abuse as well as massive bureaucratic diversion that takes funds away from care services. Worst of all, many Americans don’t get the care they need when they need it.

Despite all these problems within the U.S. health-care system, the fact that Americans “only” live on average 78.6 years and Japanese life expectancy is 83.7 years cannot be laid at health care’s doorstep.

National longevity is much more affected by genetics, lifestyle, culture, exercise, diet, and illicit drugs than by anything doctors do. For individual patients and some groups of patients, medicine can make a huge difference. For the general population, the statistical effect of health care on longevity is minimal.

When I was in medical school, essentially all children with congenital heart disease or who contracted leukemia died. Now, more than 90 percent of them live full, productive lives. While this is intensely gratifying for those who are saved as well as the doctors and nurses who save them, the number of these triumphs doesn’t move the needle much when we evaluate longevity statistics about 320 million people.

Deaths from the opioid epidemic certainly contributes to the U.S. death rate. The increase in deaths is related to more potent illicit drug combinations such as adding fentanyl to heroin rather than an increase in the number of improper prescriptions written by doctors. How does the flood of fentanyl-heroin glassine packets from China “indict” the U.S. healthcare system?

The reality is that national longevity is in control of the people, not the physicians. Medicine cannot change our genetic code (yet), but people can decide what they eat and how they live. If U.S. longevity declines, blame ourselves, not healthcare.

The concern is that policymakers will take the wrong lesson from statistics like these and use them to push for more unnecessary control over the daily lives of Americans.

For instance, under the guise of improving health, ObamaCare mandated all Americans purchase health insurance, heavily regulated what plans had to offer and what people had to pay for, and prevented many from choosing their own health care providers.

The result, of course, has been skyrocketing health care costs and no improvement in health outcomes, while vastly limiting the freedoms of Americans to make choices for themselves."