Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104-degree Fahrenheit fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure.
“How does that happen in a modern society?” his father, Ciaran Staunton, asked me.
So begins The Atlantic’s story about a common instance of malpractice. It is not easy to admit that America is so poor in healthcare delivery. According to most metrics, we lag well behind other advanced countries and that gap widened considerably during the Coronavirus pandemic. See, for example, The Peterson-KFF Health Tracker Survey, How does the quality of the U.S. health system compare to other countries?
If market forces applied, we’d be paying less for shoddy care. But they do not. The result is something I write about on this blog frequently – Quality Fraud. We over pay for marginal return in quality. Worse, too many have no ability to pay and are uninsured. That is a problem we are trying to come to grips with, at least.
Infections – and very serious ones – are more and more commonplace. In Florida, flesh-eating bacteria spread through the ocean and gulf waters. The foods we eat are often tainted with salmonella and other dangerous microbes.
We ought to be able to get a handle on this and yet, over the decades, I’ve watched our healthcare management deteriorate.
Here is a link to the article in The Atlantic.
Doctors Still Struggle to Diagnose a Condition That Kills More Americans Than Stroke
