The Lafayette Journal & Courier has a couple of articles about how the recession is affecting people’s health. Basically, the dynamic is that people are short on money, they skimp on medicines, and the lack of medicine affects their ability to work. Nasty cycle.
Dorothy Schneider has an article about the recession’s affect on those with mental health problems while Linda Johnson, for the Associated Press, has an article about the recession’s affect on diabetics.
People skimping on medicine up front also increases the nation’s overall health care bill. They don’t take their medicine because they can’t afford it. Then, they get really sick and get treated in the emergency room which, often times, is an order of magnitude more expensive than the medicine would have been. (Mental health has a similar “emergency room” dynamic — with the decline of readily available resources for the mentally ill, chances increase for the mentally ill to cross paths with the law at some point, at which time, their treatment becomes much more expensive and less effective in a correctional setting than it would have been in a medical setting.)
On the other hand, some of the failure to take medicine may have to do with poor decision making. I came across this quote in the diabetes article:
“By December, people were making decisions in terms of, ‘Do I fill this prescription or … buy Christmas presents for my kids?”‘ Lasky added.
If it’s truly a choice between these things, pretty clearly, you fill the prescription. It makes you wonder what purchases folks are making a higher priority than their medicines. Food and shelter go above medicine, but after that, medicine probably has to be one of the first priorities. Diabetes isn’t something to mess around with.
If subsidizing sports stadiums can come before buying medicine then surely a Christmas gift for the kid should be no less understandable.
Awesome problem of choosing! I can understand such parents who sacrify their health for the happiness of their children. One of the first priorities for the government should be help for such people. Increase of the nation’s overall health care bill can be stopped by small donations and constant control, to my mind.
This is interesting, albeit quite sad. In a somewhat related post, I saw the White House budget director’s blog discussed the economic downturn and its impact on crime and alcohol use. Some of the findings and assertions were quite surprising. You might find it interesting: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/04/09/EconomicDownturnsandCrime/