Our health care system is crippled by desperate efforts to
prevent the inevitable. A third of the national Medicare
budget--nearly $175 billion--is spent on the final year of life,
and a third of that amount on the final month, often on expensive
(and futile) treatments. Such efforts betray a fundamental flaw in
how we think about healthcare: we squander resources on hopeless
situations, instead of using them to actually improve health.In
"Predictive Health," distinguished doctors Kenneth Brigham and
Michael M.E. Johns propose a solution: invest earlier--and use
science and technology to make healthcare more available and
affordable. Every child would begin life with a post-natal genetic
screen, when potential risk--say for type II diabetes or heart
disease--would be found. More data on biology, behavior, and
environment would be captured throughout her life. Using this
information, health-care workers and the people they care for could
forge personal strategies for healthier living long before a small
glitch blows up into major disease. This real health care wouldn't
just replace much of modern disease care--it would make it
obsolete. The result, according to Brigham and Johns, will be a
life defined by a long stay at top physical and mental form, rather
than an early peak and long decline. Accomplishing this goal will
require new tools, new clinics, fewer doctors and more mentors,
smarter companies, and engaged patients. In short, it will require
a revolution. Thanks to a decade-long collaboration between
Brigham, Johns and others, it is already underway.
An optimistic plan for reducing or eliminating many chronic
diseases as well as reforming our faltering medical system,
"Predictive Health" is a deeply knowledgeable, deeply humane
proposal for how we can reallocate expenses and resources to
prolong the best years of life, rather than extending the
worst.
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