Why are healthcare costs rising?
For several reasons. One is for several years actually a lot of health insurance premiums did not keep pace with inflation. For another thing we’ve got an aging population, and that drives costs higher to some extent. We also have a lot of wonderful new treatments that are in the pipe lines that are coming out, new drugs, new devices, new genetic treatments. And every time we get a new break-through, we get exciting headlines about it, people say, “Oh, my goodness, we’ve got to have that,” and how dare we deny this wonderful new thing to this poor soul who needs it. Meanwhile, even though our economy is in great shape right now, employers are not going to be wildly enthusiastic about the idea of paying more for health care in the future. Should ethics play a role in health care policy? Ethics can’t not play a role, because ethics concerns whatever is the most important in the way that human beings treat each other. And so since health is a very important part of human life, we can’t no
