We can all agree that healthcare is a vital part of the societies within which we exist. We all need doctors and dentists from time to time. That said, healthcare is not always as straightforward as it should be. In an ideal world, companies produce drugs and doctors and other healthcare professionals use these drugs and other medical interventions to ensure the well-being of the rest of us. In the world that we live in, healthcare is burdened with certain challenges and most believe that sorting out these challenges would lead to better medical outcomes and a healthier society overall.
Health care vs. profits
Healthcare was never meant to be run as a business. Healthcare is supposed to be a noble endeavor, but with the capitalistic nature of the world we live in, companies have turned health care into the healthcare industry. Hospitals and other health provision centers have been turned into businesses by those who seek to profit from what ails the population at large.
Vested interests like these are the primary reason why medical costs are rising and medical outcomes are getting worse. When medical care and drugs become too expensive because they have been monetized and used to siphon billions of money from sick people’s pockets, the people who cannot afford these costs are no longer able to get the medical care they need.
Turning medical health care into a profit-making machine is something we all ought to be concerned about and focused on.
Overuse of medications
Even the cost of healthcare is going up, those who can afford it usually abuse drugs leading to negative medical outcomes. The overprescription of opioids in the United States, for example, has led to one of the biggest addiction crises the world has ever seen. The overuse of antibiotics has led to the springing up of “superbugs” that are getting harder and harder to treat.
The overuse of medication was never supposed to happen and with people now overly cautious of their health – leading to a higher demand for medicines – we have a situation where addiction and drug resistance are a danger to us all.
The focus should be on finding alternative ways to dealing with pain (which will help with issues such as opioid addiction) as well as dealing with infections (which would help, but not really solve, the issue of superbugs).
Using technology in tandem with science as tools
Even with how far we have come in terms of technological advancements, the uptake of technology in the medical world is still very low. Even though we have tools such as robots and the internet to help provide better healthcare, these tools are yet to be utilized to their full potential.
It is not overly concerning that this is where we are today, but we should be much further than we are now even if the medical community concedes that the use of technology together with science is growing and will continue to do so.
