If you or a loved one has cancer, doctors can treat it and, in many cases, cure it.
When a blocked artery starves the heart of oxygen, doctors can snake a catheter through blood vessels from your groin to your chest and prop that artery open. If a kidney fails, they can hook you to a machine that filters wastes from your blood or replace your kidney with a donated organ.
Modern medicine can enhance your life and extend it. All it costs is about $2.2 trillion a year -- roughly one-seventh of the entire national economy.
To borrow the memorable term former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld coined to describe the Iraq war, health care has become a "catastrophic success."
Last week Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told members of the Senate Finance Committee that something has to give. "At some point, health care spending as a share of the gross domestic product will stop rising," he said, but added "there's little sign of it yet."
There are, however, signs that for the first time since the failed Clinton health care reform effort of 14 years ago, reform is a real possibility. Health care has been among the top issues in the 2008 presidential campaign and in state elections across the country.
Business groups, organized labor and ordinary citizens all are clamoring for action. Their resolve is crystallized by the realization that we're simply not getting enough for the enormous investment we're making. Consider:
-- The average cost of group coverage provided by businesses to their workers jumped by 78 percent between 2001 and 2007.
-- During the same period, the percentage of companies that offer health benefits fell from 68 percent to 60.
-- Ordinary Americans spend more on health care each year than they do on food or housing.
Despite all this spending, a recent study found that among developed nations, the U.S. has the highest rate of so-called preventable deaths . Millions of children and adults go without care they need and die prematurely as a result. Millions more, including many who have health insurance, live in fear that they are just one serious illness removed from bankruptcy.
The good news is that we can do better -- not by borrowing from overseas, but by building on the many strengths of American health care to fashion a health system of our own.
We can make the next generation of Americans the healthiest ever. And we can do it without drastically increasing what we're already spending on medical care.
It won't happen without strong bipartisan leadership. That's already beginning to form. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, have joined to sponsor health reform legislation.
Their bill is unlikely to be approved quickly, or for that matter, approved at all. But their impulse to reach across the aisle is a step in the right direction. Neither party is going to be able to dictate meaningful reform on its own, no matter what happens in November.
But Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is right: Everyone, including the insurance industry, must be part of the solution. Successful reform will be the result of compromises on all sides. Government, the market and personal responsibility all will play a role. And every American will be covered for at least basic care.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton famously asked his wife, First Lady Hillary Clinton, to head up an health reform effort. Faced with that chance for change, Americans allowed themselves to be convinced that reforming the current system was risky and that their best option was to do nothing. Now we've seen the results.
The American health care system simply doesn't work for growing numbers of Americans. The rest of us can't afford -- medically, economically and morally --to let it go on like this for much longer. To see more of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.stltoday.com. Copyright (c) 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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