Dirigo Health could aid economy

Per person, $5,440. For the whole country, $1.6 trillion.

That’s what we paid for health care last year. If that sounds like a lot, it’s probably because it is.

Health care costs have been increasing by double-digit rates in recent years, while the overall economy has recorded rates of about 2 percent a year. While most of us like to blast insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and hospitals, in all fairness it’s a constantly changing product we pay for when we buy insurance or pay hospitals and doctors.

Back in 1970, health care costs amounted to only a couple of hundred dollars a person. But that didn’t buy care even remotely comparable to what we have today.

My paternal grandmother died in the 1970s after a series of heart attacks. If today’s heart care had been available, she might have had surgery and lived another decade. That would have given me hundreds of more cribbage games with her.

A century ago diarrhea was a leading cause of death. Doctors simply hadn’t figured out all the chemicals people lost when they became dehydrated.

And some newer products keep getting improved on a regular basis. Stents used to keep arteries open for some people sometimes failed after a period of years. These older stents cost $1,900. Today’s $4,000 models are medicated and last longer.

Radiation treatments for prostate cancer are increasingly less toxic, yet are more successful in stopping the cancer.

Doses of some very successful chemotherapies can cost as much as $2,500 each, but survival rates have increased appreciably for lymphomas, Hodgkin’s disease and testicular cancer.

Mammograms are being done with more frequency and for younger women, saving more lives each year.

Frequent advances have made diabetes much easier to live with.

HIV-AIDS used to be a definite death sentence. New drugs are enabling victims to live more productive, longer lives.

Pharmaceuticals have helped patients with many diseases, but the prices of pills or other prescriptions have been a big contributor to health care inflation, growing at an annual rate of 15 percent last year. This was slow compared with some recent years.

Whatever one thinks about the pharmaceutical industry, it’s clear it has made great gains that have helped millions.

As clear as it is that medicine is making great gains, it’s equally clear that the costs can’t continually increase at the rates we have experienced. All of us know of someone living without health insurance. One serious illness can result in bankruptcy.

Even worse, ignoring symptoms because there’s no way to pay can be fatal. It doesn’t seem that with all our fancy technologies, anyone should be weighing bankruptcy against death.

All but the most conservative politicians admit, at least in private, that some kind of single-payer health care system is inevitable. Hats off to Gov. John Baldacci’s attempt to form Dirigo health care insurance.

If it works, and small businesses participate, it would be a great economic stimulus for the state. People would no longer be forced to stay in jobs they don’t want just because of the insurance.

And would-be entrepreneurs would be much more free to take the jump and start a business if they didn’t have to worry about the availability of insurance for their families. In a state where small business is king, it could be a huge boost.