Cherry Garcia, Lipitor & You (and me, too!)

[Welcome City Journal readers!]

So what do a deceased musician, an ice cream company and a brand-name drug have to do with each other? And why should you care?

Let's take that last one first: as we've noted many times here at IB, the cost of medications has caused major increases in the cost of health care, and thus health insurance. Since this affects everyone's pocketbook [ed: "pocketbook" is so quaint; don't you mean "wallet?"], it seems to me that anything we learn that can help us to understand this dynamic must be a good thing.

And so IB reader, and City Journal editor Brian Anderson, sent me a link to this C-J article on the relationship between how we perceive ourselves and our health, and how disparate segments of the economy play on that perception:

"Call it tuning, if you prefer. Lipitor tunes our cholesterol. Anti-stroke medicines tune our platelets, antidepressants our serotonin and dopamine, heart medicines our angiotensin-converting enzymes, contraceptives our estrogen. Cancer drugs tame or kill our own mutant genes. And for every drug to suppress chemical excess, there’s another to address deficits: insulin for the underperforming pancreas, clotting factors for bleedy blood, Synthroid for the tired thyroid, and cancer-suppressing proteins to lend a hand to tumor-suppressing genes."

It's about balance as well as perception, of course; sometimes the cure is indeed worse than the disease. But it goes beyond that: if we're constantly looking to "tune" ourselves (remember our post on Jiffy Lube medical clinics?), aren't we also contributing to the increasing cost of health care?

On the other hand, if the alternative is to ignore or leave untreated potentially life-threatening illnesses, we're also responsible for raising that bar, and those costs. It's not so much a "lose-lose" or "win-win" as it is "actions have consequences."

And so does "inaction."