...Housing is Medicine...

It just dawned on me, and this is a really flimsy argument with no reading up on or thinking in depth about, but I am starting to see how the Housing Crisis has predicted the outcome of our Great Medical debate.

In a nutshell, Americans were buying homes they could not afford. When push came to shove, and Adjustable Rate Mortgages adjusted the upwards way, people couldn't afford their mortgage, and everything else collapsed.

What if the Medical field is the same thing? What if we have advanced so far, on the heels of unthinkable profits by the triumverate of modern medicine (Insurance Providers, Pharmaceutical Companies and Wall Street), that the costs of operating modern medicine are exceeding what we can actually afford.

This isn't a question of who should receive the treatments, in this case I am not talking specifically about the Health Care debate, I'm talking about the notion that the High Cost surgeries, x-rays, drugs, prescriptions, plastic limbs and miniature cameras that are all inside people's bodies...what if all of those things add up to a cost that far exceeds what we can actually afford?

The Housing situation is clearly shifting, we are seeing some markets, like Massachusetts, show growth in home purchase numbers, even in places like Las Vegas and Florida as well - things are looking up. The reason, I think, is because everyone has changed their mindset, right? There was obviously relief in the form of loan leniency as well as tax breaks for first time home buyers - but the reasons are less important than the fact that there are reasons. And most certainly people aren't buying homes they cannot afford, and if they are, they are doing it on money borrowed from Mom & Dad as opposed to a bank that is charging 2% now and 18% later.

So what form would it take with modern medicine? What is the choice? We have gone too far, we cannot look back, can we? Maybe we have to. To put it in the housing terms, maybe we cannot afford the jacuzzi and the 4th bedroom, and we have to live in a 2-Bedroom ranch in a town we don't want to live in.

The trail my brain is going down is terrifying. Imagine the Gov't decision-making that would have to take place on where we'd have to sacrifice? Would it be no more MRI's? Would it be no more anti-depressant or other psychological drugs? What if we cannot afford all this stuff?

Now, the thing you're probably thinking is, "of course we can afford it, but the price has just been gouged so high by Pharmas and HMO's, and that is fixable..." Is it? Does a house really have to cost a 1/2 million? You do realize that we are equating "health" in the Housing Market with a return to "normal" prices and a return to acceptable level of people willing to pay those prices. What makes you think it'd be any different for a 2 week supply of Prozac?