There is a new “experiment” going on in Philadelphia-getting paid by the government to take your medication. Here’s how it works, according to an NY Times article, “people prescribed warfarin, an anti-blood-clot medication, can win $10 or $100 each day they take the drug — a kind of lottery using a computerized pillbox to record if they took the medicine and whether they won that day.” The concept is that patient noncompliance to medication leads to unnecessary hospitalization at a cost of over $100 billion annually. We, as a society, should use any means necessary to avoid this, right? I disagree.
My concern is this: how much can we abdicate our responsibility as human beings to take care of ourselves? Do you really need to be paid everyday to take a medication that prevents you from dropping dead within minutes due to a heart attack, stroke or any other malady one can think of? I can recall when my son took Singulair to prevent the terrible asthma attacks he would get, often sending him to the hospital. To me, there was nothing more important than making sure that child had that medicine that kept him healthy! I created a routine to assure myself that I would never forget his daily dose.
That being said, there is a bigger issue, at least for me, in question here or the next layer, if you will: how has the government gotten so intimately involved in maintaining or treating our health and our bodies? In the words of the great Ronald Reagan, “Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” Yes, I know that paying people may prevent hospitalizations, spending a lot of money, etc…but involving the government in personal health compliance seems like a potentially slippery slope.
Another thought I have is, would these same people being paid to essentially take care of themselves be willing to get paid to take poison, that is, if the government offered it at a good payout? I mean, if it could turn a good profit and one doesn’t care about their health anyway, why not right??
What do you think??
