Maybe it’s becuase I’m not a doctor, but when I think of “health”, I don’t think in terms of treatments or treatment outcomes (which ARE very important, don’t get me wrong), rather, I think in terms of the overall health of the population (BMI, BP, HR, level of fitness, stress, mental state etc.). When it comes to modern medicine, I think that a third is very good (if it weren’t for modern medicine I’d be dead), another third is uelsess (i.e. it doesn’t do any good and it doesn’t do any harm, except maybe to the pocketbook) and the remaining third is actually harmful to some degree or another. The key is to identify and embrace the good third and try to avoid the bad third.
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If you are interested in medicine, pursue pharmaceutical research or sales. Or biotech which is riskier but the financial payoff or expected value is higher than in medicine such as doctor, nurse or hospital administration
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No question that medical spending has exponentially increased since 1965.
What happened in 1966? Medicare and Medicaid take effect on January 1.
2009 Obama care has made everything worse.
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Medicine is not yet at the stage where we can predict your health, based upon known factors. Yes, there are some aspects that lend themselves to that, but by-and-large it’s treatment of ailments as they present that makes up medicine, and so, at least for me, the sense of “health” of the population. Much is said about this and that preventative action, but most of that, IMO, falls into the latter two groups you mention.
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Certainly you can make a lot of money, but if you’re at all concerned about ethics, you might want to reconsider. Look up interviews with former Eli Lilly sales exec John Virapen on YouTube about his experiences.
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Good point
The opiate crisis and epidemic is complicated
We shouldn’t malign an entire industry based on the actions of a single company marketing a specific drug.
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The corruption in the pharmacutical industry goes way beyond the actions of a single company marketing a specific drug. I don’t have time right now to elaborate, I’ll try to respond more completely later. To be honest, I wasn’t even thinking about the opiate crisis when I made my comment, but that’s certainly one example! 
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Kind of reminds one of all the comments about islam after each islamic outfrage.
Of course we can!
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I guess you did not travel to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UK, or places like that? The reality is that the obesity epidemic is spreading worldwide – and it is a serious question as to what is causing it.
It is quite startling to look at photos of, say, the people on the crowded beaches during the Apollo launches and see how only about half a century ago most people were non-obese. Some blame modern agricultural practices and “ultra-processed foods” as the cause of our current metabolic dysfunction – but the reality is that only an industrialized approach allows the planet to feed nearly 9 Billion human beings.
What we can clearly see is that the world is changing round about us, in time frames that are longer than our attention spans but much shorter than a human lifetime.
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You won me over with your comment about Islam. I like to blame Islam for a lot of terrible things.
The difference is pharmaceutical companies occasionally do good and their products extend the lives of many patients.
Their goal is to make money for better or worse.
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You may be right in general, but there are so many examples of abuse to tar the whole mob. Look JUST at WuFlu vaccine!
I also don’t think all the ads are helpful.
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Some of this is because we have moved towards a more sedentary society. You don’t move about, you get fat. But some is aimple economic. Protein is expensive - AND if doesn’t taste that great. So getting enough protein in your diet (and so being sated after a meal) is hard. Carbs are so much cheaper - AND taste good. So everyone who is hungry, defaults to what they can most afford. Carbs.
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Agree about covid flu
Moderna had a bad reputation before covid
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I will abstain from one of my long explanations, but must say that if this were generally the case, there would be a lot fewer addicts who default to expensive drugs…
That said, my own suspicion is that the fault which is obesity is in our genes, not in our stars. It is in our human nature. Overeating - especially simple carbs - stimulates the same final common pathway in the pleasure centers of our brains as do all the other ingestive (and process) addictions. Overeating thus leads to craving ever more, thus repetition of the behavior of eating regardless of the negative consequences. The fact we live in a time of abundance and wealth rather than scarcity and poverty, makes food addiction the poor man’s/woman’s heroin. Same neural pathway, different ingestive behaviors, different physical/emotional/societal consequences. This is a long argument to make, and a number of books have already been written. I won’t contribute one here.
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Yes, that’s why I didn’t include them in my list (by Europe, I was referring more to Continental Europe), but you’re absolutely right, the epidemic is spreading globally (e.g. I hear that diabetes is exploding in China). Hard to pinpoint exactly what’s gone wrong, but I think that the use of high-fructose corn syrup in everything didn’t help, nor did the whole low-fat craze. These days I’m starting to suspect that a lot of chronic disease is actually caused by vaccines creating some sort of low-level autoimmune response in our bodies. One thing I do know is that the medical establishment (and I’m lumping all the regulatory agencies, professional organizations, research institutions, private industry etc. together) isn’t going to help us find any answers.
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I can totally identify with this…I’m an emotional eater and “self-medicate” with food. Not good.
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One of our biggest mistakes was allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers…talk about creating a massive chain of corruption that drives all the wrong incentives.
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So did Pfizer!
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Could a simple summary of this be that the mechanistic ‘state’ tries to ‘improve things’ by taking away human agency and accountability from individuals, while creating more rules for the brainless cogs?
As a result of this ‘saving the fringes’ it’s throwing the sane middle under the bus? Whereas the elite never cared much for rules anyway.
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Re’ ambulance chasing lawyers”
Oh please, I hate that—remember those Blue Cross commercials with a cast of thousands of people in cowboy hats? How much d’ya think that costs? It’s not the lawyers’ fault, it’s the insurance industry and third party payments. Yet everybody blames doctors—and, like you, lawyers.
And, you mention the doctor’s or NP’s attention to the screen…again: insurance. The insurance companies succeeded in shifting the mountainous administrative paperwork on to the physicians’ offices.
In Pa, for years now, it’s been pretty difficult to sue ANY professional. For med malpractice you have to get a certificate from a physician stating that the claim has merit.
Insurance should only be catastrophic. Anual medical expenses you can foresee and budget for—you should.
But how could we ever get rid of the insurance industry? It employs so many people.
Also, they aren’t training doctors to be competent any more; just to be wise in the ways of the woke. In the future there will be so many iatrogenic injuries that they’ll hafta pass a general health care provider immunity law.
But then, the same thing is happening in law schools, so…either way I’d say that what insurance companies used to call the “malpractice crisis” is pretty much played out.
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