Health care is unbelievably expensive. And while everybody has somebody to blame for it (and of course, it is never themselves that they blame), the truth is that we all have a hand in the health care expenses that we carry in this country. While the health care dollars that we shell out have made our lives longer and generally healthier, they have also put a lot of strain on us all. So before we all go on and fight another civil war over who is to blame for our unbelievable health care expenditures, we should probably do some work to break down and understand just how expensive it is to stay healthy through artificial medical means. After all, the easiest (in the long run) and least expensive way to be healthy is simply to live a healthy life style. But since that is generally inconvenient, most people would rather wait until they have a life threatening emergency and then trust medical professionals to heroically fix it for them.
To put things in perspective, we have an infant mortality rate of roughly six out of one thousand babies. That means a baby has a more than 99 percent chance of making it to one year old. While that is not the best in the world, it is still pretty good, consider that only a few generations ago the infant mortality rate was well into the double digits. Until the Industrial Revolution, some people have estimated that as many as one out of two babies did not make that critical first birthday. And to just get your child born in a hospital (assuming that everything turns out okay) takes about $20,000 to get done. But that is a drop in the bucket, considering what comes afterward.
The average child will see their pediatrician roughly 25 times by the time they turn 18. If each visit is $150 (the national average for a basic checkup), there goes about four grand, not counting prescription medicines. And once you make it into adulthood, things get even more expensive as you begin to grow older.