Show THE IE VOICE OF BUSINESS ESS' ESS Life style is th the key k V to better health By Dy L L. L Lester Lesher Pros Pres Chamber of Commerce of the United States Slates For many years now the I Federal Government has been complaining bitterly of the rapid Increase in health-care health costs And for just as many 1 years the government has itself been a major factor in inI I causing those increases Any competent economist I could have told us and many of them did that massive doses of new money would raise i costs faster than quality And that is exactly what has hap hap- In 1965 our national health healthcare healthcare healthcare care expenses were about 40 billion a year Today the figure is nearly billion per person That's an increase of percent Yet the cost of living has not risen by percent since then The population has not increased by percent And we are certainly certainly cera not percent healthier WHAT FACTOR can we find that has increased by at least that much The answer of course is government spending on health care Since 1965 public spending has risen by percent Thanks largely to this kind of 01 help our present high health healthcare healthcare healthcare care costs are likely to double by 1982 just five years' years from now I IThe IThe The National Chamber and the American business community community com corn are just as concerned about these cost Increases as the government Business is a major consumer of health care services through employee health insurance plans industrial in industrial in medical facilities and taxes Businesses need and want healthy employees with healthy families But that objective does not exclude asking whether the money we are spending on health care is being spent wisely INDEED some health-care health experts are beginning to wonder if more money from any source can buy more health Lester Breslow of UCLA Walter of Blue Cross and John Knowles of the Rockefeller Foundation have all recently pointed a finger at life style as the real major health problem today As Dr Knowles put it The individual must realize that a perpetuation of the present system of high-cost high the after fact medicine will only result in higher costs and more frustration The next major advance in the health of the American people will result only from what the Individual is willing to do for himself There is fortunately a growing realization in Congress and the Administration that the country simply cant can't pay for any more massive government programs That realization hasn't grown enough yet as a alook alook alook look at the federal budget shows but it has grown enough to scuttle any immediate efforts to launch a federal national health healthcare healthcare care plan Only a few diehard are still pushing that one That's the good news The bad news is that the government government govern govern- ment has a curious view of cost containment in the health care field The Administration Administration Ad ministration is toying with the idea of putting a lid on the industry's prices while continuing continuing continuing con con- to increase its costs with such things as minimum wage hikes I call this the King Canute school of economics in memory of the monarch who ordered the tide not to come in |