Viewpoint: Real Preventive Medicine is Around the Corner

“DALLAS--(Business Wire)--

U.S. Preventive Medicine®, the leader in disease prevention services, today

applauded U.S. President Barack Obama’s call for modernizing the health care

system by investing in prevention initiatives aimed at controlling costs and

improving the health of Americans.” (24 March 2009)

What a marvelous idea! All we have to do is to prevent sickness, injury, and death, 
and the cost of medical care will go down. The economy will be saved. I don’t know 
why I didn’t think of this sometime during the last 61 years of my medical practice 
since I escaped from the University of Illinois Medical School.

I must admit, I have been a spectacular failure at curing chronic alcoholism, binge 
drinking, illegal drug usage, bungee jumping, cigarette smoking, chronic obesity, 
gang banging, motorcycle riding without helmets, and promoting the use of automobile 
seat belts, the use of heavy, safe cars with multiple air bags, and the prevention of all
 types of metastatic cancer.

If the President would instruct us old-timers on these matters, maybe the overcharging by 
the medical profession would stop and the national debt would be cured. 
Now that would be what I call preventive medicine.