Healthcare Really is Better Today Than it Used to Be

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Austin Frakt writes today about a new journal article describing the vast strides we’ve made in treating heart disease over the past 50 years:

Improvement in care for patients with cardiovascular disease is one of the great medical success stories of the 20th century, complementing great strides in public health. We owe this triumph of medicine to the interdisciplinary efforts at enhancement to the technology of care (from devices to drugs to surgical technique), evidence from clinical trials, and dissemination of best practice and lifestyle improvements via education programs.

And don’t forget money! All this interdisciplinary wonderfulness is, needless to say, one of the reasons that healthcare costs so much more today than it did in the 50s. Back then, the article says, patients with acute myocardial infarction “were placed in beds located throughout the hospital and far enough away from nurses’ stations that their rest would not be disturbed. Patients were commonly found dead in their beds, presumably from a fatal tachyarrhythmia.”

Not any longer, and because of that survival rates are far higher than they used to be. Ditto for infant mortality, which this post reminded me of. A couple of years ago I posted a copy of the hospital bill for my delivery in 1958, which came to about $1,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. But as my mother reminded me, that’s because the hospital didn’t do much of anything back then. When she arrived, they put her in a room that had….a bed, a bedside table, and a telephone. That’s it. In the delivery room, there was….a bed and a doctor. No epidurals, no beeping machines, no phalanx of specialists, and no real-time monitoring of every vital sign known to man.

Today an ordinary, uncomplicated delivery costs upwards of $10,000. Is that worth it? Well, as the chart above shows, infant mortality in the United States has dropped from 26 per thousand to about 6 per thousand over the past 50 years. There are multiple reasons for this, but all that technology is one of them. We spend a lot of unnecessary money in our healthcare system, and we tend to (rightly) focus a lot of attention on that. But we also spend a lot of pretty valuable money. That fact that newborns and heart attack patients are both a lot less likely to die these days is pretty good evidence of that.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate