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In the 18-century you were old at 30, dead by 40 and the state of medical science was leeches.  Broken bones were crudely splinted but, wounds were often an agonizing end.  Medical science from the east had been condemned by the church and forgotten.

Global warfare during the 19th century greatly advanced medical science and treatment. Experiments on the casualties built a curriculum for new generation of Doctors.  By the beginning of the 20th century these doctors understood how little they really knew about medicine.  Even more brutal wars in foreign lands led these doctors to new insights on saving lives.

By the 21st century technological advances in medicine make it possible to keep even the dead, alive.  Medicine has become big business and everyone must pay for all the pumps, ventilators, medication, bedpans and around the clock monitoring that keep the body technically alive.  Insurance companies are all to ready to pull the plug, while hospitals vote to keep the body alive as long as paitents’ money holds out.  Medical personnel stand ready to recycle poor soul’s parts and drug companies invent a more expensive cocktails that promises to raise the dead.   Med-business tabulates the profits, forecasting population growth as greater prospects for share holders.  The bottom line, the rich get taken, the poor are left in the dust while the middle class goes broke paying Band-Aid freight.

Medical care is on the political agenda this year. Debate centers on the cost and who gets the most Band-Aids.  The lines are drawn, insurance companies (vested interest), drug companies (vested interest), Med-businesses (vested interest), medical personnel (vested interest).  Who represents the injured and ill, not the legislature (vested interest) looking for votes in the fall?

In an affluent and civilized society necessary medical care should be available to all without social bankruptcy.  Debate should really consider what is really necessary care for quality of life.  A broken leg, fix them all.  Civilizations destroying contagious plague, cure them all.  How about a butt lift, or social overhaul while you are unconcious, two operations for one anesthesia, with three you get egg rolls.

There is clearly a need for health care reform but who is best able to draft those reforms, the imperial health care industry or an imperial government?  Neither vested interest is capable of objective resolution of conflicting patient interests.  All proposals raise the cost of treatment and fail to cure the malady.  We are back to the age of leeches now sucking bucks from patients’ wallets.

The medical buzz around a hospital is to have a living will for your treatment. Who do you trust as executor, a government bureaucrat or a Med-business bureaucrat or a prospective heir, maybe even a disinterested stranger walking down the hall?  It’s time for serious debate on quality of life care rather than technical possible care.