Concerning healthcare system as one of the most important and expensive branches of each country, it is obvious that discussions regarding its costs and achievements are on the top all the time. The issues of whether medical care should/should not be free of charge for the society; and, on the other hand, the arising issue whether medical insurance programs should/should not be compulsory are critically important nowadays.
Key words: medicine, wasted resources, costs and expenses, trials.
“…Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result…”
Benjamin Franklin
Medicine as a branch of science is highly-demanded and highly-appreciated by the members of the society. However, there is a strong belief that it could be possible to save much time and, what is more important for the budget, money once there were less wasted sources of health care.
According to Internal Medicine, the main point of today’s medicine is cutting costs and expenses in order to look for new solutions. On the other hand, the process of searching and researching something new often appears to discover and support facts which have been already known for several years if not decades:
During the period of 1980-1990s, more than 8,000 patients participated in several tests aimed to study new type of medicine for stroke treatment. Dutch researchers reviewed the results of these trials systematically, and did not succeed in finding any benefits of the medicine. They decided to review the results of tests of the same medicine which were done previously in animals; as a result, they did not find any beneficial effects there as well (Wasted resources in healthcare and research, 2012).
The question is whether time, efforts, and expenses spent for double-testing of the same medicine and/or method of treatment could be justified…
References
Kumar, R. (2011). Wasted Healthcare Resources. Internal Medicine. Retrieved on 6 October 2012 from HYPERLINK "http://rk.md/2011/wasted-health-care-resources/" http://rk.md/2011/wasted-health-care-resources/
Wasted resources in healthcare and research (2012). Testing Treatments Interactive, 2012. Retrieved on 5 October 2012 from
HYPERLINK "http://www.testingtreatments.org/tt-main-text/assessing-all-the-relevan t-reliable-evidence/what-can-happen-if-all-the-relevant-reliable-evidenc e-is-not-assessed/wasted-resources-in-healthcare-and-research/" http://www.testingtreatments.org/tt-main-text/assessing-all-the-relevant -reliable-evidence/what-can-happen-if-all-the-relevant-reliable-evidence …