Medicine Triumphs

You know that a lot of my thinking revolves around the proposition that we spend too much on medical intervention and it really doesn't do all that much good. Type 2 diabetes is one of my best examples. If we could all just skip the processed food and sugar water, and get some exercise, we'd never need the doctor in the first place.

Maybe so, but we haven't been doing that. So, doc to the rescue. CDC investigators have found that even though the prevalence of diabetes has gone up, complications are way down. Why? Because we've figured out that we need to concentrate on preventing the cardiovascular and kidney complications that maim and kill most diabetics, and we have better drugs. I'd feel better if people were losing weight and eating whole grains and legumes instead  of white bread and soda, but they aren't.

In spite of fraud by pharmaceutical companies, underinvestment in public health, overtreatment and all the other constant complaints you read here, medicine does gradually get better. So let's have universal access, as a fundamental right.