Health Care’s Road To Ruin

HAVING spent the last year reporting for a series of articles on the high cost of American medicine, I’ve heard it all. There was Fred Abrahams, 77, a skier who had surgery on both ankles for arthritis — one in New York for more than $200,000 and one in New Hampshire for less than $40,000. There was Matthew Landman, 41, billed more than $100,000 for antivenin administered in an E.R. after a small rattlesnake bite. There was Robin Miller, a Florida businessman, who needed to buy an implantable defibrillator for his ill brother, who was uninsured; the machine costs tens of thousands of dollars, but he couldn’t get a price for a make or a model.

Extreme anecdotes, perhaps. But the series has prompted more than 10,000 comments of outrage and frustration — from patients, doctors, politicians, even hospital and insurance executives.

As of Jan. 1, the Affordable Care Act promises for the first time to deliver the possibility of meaningful health insurance to every American. But where does that leave the United States in terms of affordable care?

Even supporters see Obamacare as a first step on a long quest to bring Americans affordable medicine, with further adjustments, interventions and expansions needed.