Every day we deal with important health research, like today's revelation that people taking antioxidants may have a 5 percent higher risk of death. That's an abstraction, however.
A health care reality is that our system couldn't pay for a child's $80 tooth-extraction but could pay $250,000 to treat a brain infection caused by his rotted tooth. Too late, though. He died.
Today's big health research headline could change what 150 million Americans do every morning pop a vitamin pill. A powerful statistical review of 68 studies involving 232,000 people found that taking antioxidants beta carotene, Vitamin A or Vitamin E not only doesn't extend life, it may increase the risk of dying by 5 percent.
But that isn't really the most important thing that appeared in the morning paper in Washington. That is reserved for a human-interest story about a boy with a bad tooth who finally got it extracted at a cost of perhaps $250,000 and his life.
The death of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver was from a brain infection that resulted from inability of his working mother to get insurance, to find a dentist willing to treat poor children who squirm in the chair and to find a surgeon willing to take Medicaid; a Medicaid snafu that left the boy temporarily uncovered; and an abscess that slowly spread and required brain surgery and a two-week hospital stay. By then it was too late.
For want of a simple $80 extraction, society is out a quarter of a million dollars and the incalculable value of a human life.