Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Serious Medicine Strategist, zeroes in on why, if present trends are allowed to continue, healthcare costs are headed higher, no matter who's in charge

In critically analyzing the Washington DC debate over the debt ceiling, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the well-known British journalist, makes a portion of Serious Medicine argument in a concise nutshell of a parenthetical paragraph.  In describing the difficulty of controlling federal spending, he suggests that the forces of the healthcare status quo--that is, the folks who currently gain from rising healthcare costs--are part of the problem.   Indeed, he is saying, they are the driver of the problem:

(The great health care cartel is in my view the villain here. It is the root cause of US ruin, and is itself responsible for the epidemic of diabetes, Alzheimers, and several other mass ailments afflicting America. It has systematically failed to keep up with the scientific literature, and refuses to abandon grievous policies when shown to be wrong. Americans need to confront this huge vested interest (nearly a fifth of GDP) before it destroys the country. But that is a rant for another day.)

Evans-Pritchard makes an interesting point.  Surveying the enormous cost of Alzheimer's--nearly $200 billion a year, according to the Alzheimer's Association--one has to realize that somebody is benefiting from the spending of all that money.   Nursing homes are one beneficiary, so are nursing home service workers.  So cui bono,  Evans-Pritchard is saying.

The answer, of course, is to raise up countervailing interests--starting with the American people as a whole--who understand that cures are a better health strategy than care.   We need both, of course, always, but if we have more of the former, we will need to spend less on the latter.

And that's the path to not only spending less money on healthcare, but to improving the lives of all Americans.  And the peoples of the world, too.