Chasing Numbers And Killing People

I recently wrote about cavemen sitting around the campfire and drafting the Bible’s books of Genesis and Revelation. In surfing around this evening, I came across this editorial concerning health care in America, on the Investor’s Business Daily website by David Ridenour, Vice President of the National Center for Public Policy Research.

I don’t normally read this kind of thing, yet oddly enough I read this one. What I discovered is that one of the most prescient minds in Washington D.C., and America in general was published just one week ago today saying something I have been saying to people for years! His basic take on this is an economic one, whereas I came by my own conclusions using good, ol’ fashioned common sense.


The premise of his editorial is that frivolous lawsuits drawing excessive damages are the primary factor in the rising cost and overall decline in quality of health care in America. Then he goes on to point out that in California and Texas, where laws have been established working to cap health-related lawsuit damages, the overall quality of health care is increasing, doctors are flocking to these states in droves, and insurance costs are going down.

Well, duh!

As long as I can remember, I have heard the all too frequent stories in the news about some individual or family being awarded some ridiculous amount of cash in a lawsuit against a hospital or a doctor who performed in some kind of negligent manner. As a country bumpkin, raised in the sticks of rural Florida, those numbers were simply outlandish… after all, all that money ain’t gonna’ bring ‘em back or make ‘em well! The only thing it does is drive up costs, and drive out doctors. As I’ve gotten older (not grown up), I’ve felt first-hand the sting of paying health-insurance premiums on a meager, blue-collar salary. It sucks!

The problem always seemed to me to be caused by people chasing numbers, instead of real things. Sure, it’s nice to have plenty of money (at least it seems that way from what I can tell). Even so, money only buys so much. When the focus of a person’s life is money, all they can ever see are those numbers… filling their thoughts, their dreams, and ultimately their destinies. They lose sight of the intangibles of life… like a happy household, haul-you-out-of-the-ditch friends, Sunday Supper, and connectedness with life, the universe, and everything.

An evening on a dew-covered hill, drinking cheap wine out of a Dixie Cup, warming yourself by the campfire as you struggle to make out the tune playing out of your friend’s car doors over the chirping crickets… those kinds of moments are irreplaceable. And they having nothing at all to do with the dew, the wine, the campfire or the crickets - it’s the intangible factor.

As David pointed out, “Sadly, in real life, our well-being often resides outside of emergency rooms,” and went on to explain that it moves into a courtroom. I would do him one better and say that our wellbeing resides even further away than that… away from any kind of atmosphere governed by numbers.

By: TimG

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