The Health Conspiracy

I was reading Dave Soucy’s blog the other day and I saw a video of Bill Maher berating the health care industry (you can see the video here). Bill Maher is openly progressive. He voted for Ralph Nadar, loves Michael Moore and Arianna Huffington, and was vehemently critical of George W. Bush during the 2000s. His views on health care, drug legalization, war, and the role of government are obvious to anyone who watches him.

The thesis of his rant was that the health care industry wants people to be sick and frail so that they can make billions selling expensive drugs. If people were healthy and had no pain, they’d have no reason to buy drugs that lower cholesterol, kill pain, unclog arteries, etc. If people were healthy, they’d n ever buy drugs. The logic seems simple. If people didn’t buy drugs, then the companies who sell them would go out of business.

This argument is false for several reasons. Does Bill Maher really believe that the creators of these drugs and the people who market them wake up every morning and hope that people are sick and broken? Do they hope they don’t find alternative treatment? If so, then they truly are monsters who deserve to go to hell. But I don’t think these CEOs of these companies really believe that. They honestly believe that they’re selling a product that people need and that will make them better.

Maher’s right that we as people can take a lot of precautions. We can eat right. We can exercise regularly. We can do strength training. We can stretch, brush our teeth, drink tea, have a strong purpose in life, and have plenty of social activity. I agree that a healthy lifestyle can preclude the use of prescription drugs almost all the time. And I agree we should do everything we can before we resort to expensive pills and medications. But there are instances when we need drugs and prescriptions. Diet and exercise don’t seem to be doing much for my testosterone levels. Many women such hypothyroidism despite leading a healthy lifestyle. Some people are predisposed to heart disease. Just recently one of the best triathlete’s in the world ended his career due to a rare heart condition that could kill him. Some people are born with type-I diabetes and need to inject insulin everyday.

Not everyone will take care of themselves the way they should. Nobody does all the time. How many people overate on Thanksgiving? Was that healthy? How many people will get wasted on New Year’s Day? Is that healthy? How many people strength train like they should? How many people have more than one person to confide in? Nobody is perfectly healthy.

This debate can also apply to anyone. I asked a couple of physical therapists the other day at my health club about this argument. They said there will be always be broken people, bad posture, and injuries. They’re simply providing a solution to that problem. Do they hope people are sick and injured? No, but there will always be demand for rehab. Chiropractors don’t want people to have bad backs, but they know people will have bad backs. Do personal trainers like me hope people never lose fat? No. I want people to get results. But there will always be overfat people in our society. And even if they were in good shape, they’d want to be in better shape. People are never satisfied. The fitness industry is serving a need to get into better shape. Nobody is perfect shape. And until everybody is in perfect shape, the fitness industry isn’t going anywhere.

To take this argument to the extreme would be to say that grocery stores hope people don’t learn how to grow their own food. If they did, they’d never shop at a grocery store. But nobody grows all their food, and only a few people actually grow a fraction of their food. The car industry sells cars, but does it hope that people don’t start walking or riding a bike everywhere, even though that would be healthier?

Should pharmaceuticals therefore deny drugs to people who didn’t care of themselves properly? Who’s to define what is proper care? At one point does someone become responsible? I agree that responsibility and preventive health care is lost in this whole debate, but the defintion of preventive care is elusive and fuzzy.

Imagining a world in which people don’t’ need drugs is a fantasy. If everybody in this country started to take care of themselves as best as possible, the number of prescriptions would gradually fall. Pharmaceuticals would either cut staff, or adapt.

How could they adapt? When people are healthy and don’t need drugs, they would start to demand something else that would improve their lives: drugs that improve mental clarity; supplements; protein powder; multivitamins, drugs that improve intelligence; drugs that prevent fatigue. The idea that pharmaceuticals would go out of business assumes that people’s wants and needs are static. As soon as we satisfy our needs and wants of today, we’ll be perfectly happy.

If people’s wants and needs were static, our economy would never grow. As we accumulate and build wealth, our wants and needs expand to meet that available wealth. Our economy is predicated on consumption of goods and services. How many people want nothing? The answer is zero, even though the average person today is far wealthier than our forebears generations ago. People will always want something. Wants change, but there will always be wants.

Kevin