Healthcare has become ever more complex and expensive with too many citizens not always getting the full healthcare they may need. Still we’ve come a long way in the treatment of diseases that once meant certain death and in how we treat disease and illnesses.
Joining host, Dennis McCuistion, to talk about the history of healthcare and the progress we’ve made are medical experts:
- Michael Weisberg, MD: Gastroenterologist, Author: The Hospitalist
- Adam Myers, MD: Chief Medical officer, Texas Health Physicians Group
- Don R. Read, MD: President-Elect, Texas Medical Association
Left to Right: Michael Weisberg, MD, Adam Myers, MD, & Don R. Read, MD
Guests talk about the many healthcare advances we’ve made, of which one of the most important in this century is the treatment of infectious diseases. In the 1900s most deaths were of children under 5 from infectious diseases. Today the antibiotics and vaccines, penicillin and insulin developed in this and last century are hugely influential in eradicating deaths due to infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, small pox, aids and diabetes.
Research and science have paved the way to new thoughts and treatments. Open windows for patients with pneumonia are history. Interestingly some of the same folk remedies are in still in use, except that leeches are now medical grade and nature is where many antibiotics derive from.
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One of the biggest changes to healthcare is the loss of the primary care doctor and the old fashioned doctor-patient relationship. At one time there was no emergency room physician and so your own doctor followed you to the operating room. Doctors made house calls, virtually a thing of the past.
Medicines and
healthcare have become so complex; with the wealth of knowledge doubling every four years that one person cannot be all things to each patient. We learn that 90% of
healthcare costs, which continue to spiral upwards and out of control, are incurred in the last six months of our life. And we learn more about Medicare, from Dr. Ed Annis, author of
Code Blue, who joins in via a previously televised McCuistion program. Dr. Annis, a former president of the
American Medical Association and the World Medical Association, was one of the most foremost critics of the United States
Medicare program.
This segment on the history of healthcare is the first in a three part series on healthcare, sets the stage for one of our most important social and economic issues today; healthcare and its economic, political challenge.
As always thanks for joining us as we continue talking about things that matter with people who care.
We wish you a happy, healthy new year.
Warm regards,
