What are the benefits of investing in biomedical research?
The best solution to control healthcare costs is research, says Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. He explains how research can not only help with treatment but also with prevention.
Transcript
Probably the best solution to controlling health care costs is through research, through understanding
the cause and nature of illnesses and developing better treatments. [MUSIC PLAYING]
The country is grappling with what it considers to be sort of a crisis, which is how to fund health care in the most cost
effective and beneficial way. And our government has not been able to come up with a way to do that.
We have the Affordable Care Act. But that's been such a huge political battle and continues to be that it's just an example of the difficulty that our country has
had in trying to formulate an approach. The biggest concern is, obviously,
these burgeoning expenditures that are occurring. Although cost containment and these different ways of delivering care are important,
probably the best solution to controlling health care costs is through research, through understanding the cause
and nature of illnesses and developing better treatments, ranging from very sophisticated treatments
to the things that can be done for prevention at the earliest stages of people's lives and lifestyle.
We're really severely and self-destructively underfunding this approach through biomedical research.
We've built, over the course of the post-World War II period, a impressive and leading infrastructure and workforce
in biomedical research, which is now being severely eroded because of this underfunding.
We have people going into medicine and going into the brain sciences of medicine,
some of the most talented people in our society, and they cannot do what they've committed themselves to do
because we can't get funding. And this seems to me to be so shortsighted and
self-defeating. I feel that there has to be a better recognition on the part of the government
and, really, the national populace, as to how this is affecting us, because if it continues
for very much longer, the damage is going to be very difficult to rectify. It's going to take decades to rectify.
health care
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