Genius Inventor Discusses Healthcare Reform

Popular Mechanics published an interview with Dean Kamen on the health care debate occuring in this country. Dean Kamen is the inventor of the Segway, but has many other patents to his name. "His innovations include the first wearable infusion pump, a portable kidney dialysis machine, a more flexible stent, one of the world's most advanced prosthetic arms, and many other devices used in the treatment of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other conditions."

Kamen's comments are the most sensible, reasonable, and logically coherent statements void of all political posturing I have ever heard enter the healthcare debate. Any person who wants a truly expert opinion on the medical innovation field should read Kamen's comments. They offer an entirely new perspective on the debate entirely lost between the Democrats bellowing that we need to fix healthcare now because costs are spiraling out of control and Republicans spewing comments about socialized medicine and single-payer healthcare.

With apologies to Popular Mechanics, I'm going to pull a few of Kamen's better quotes because people need to read them even if they do not go to the Popular Mechanics link.

"Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We're developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people's lives."

"I'd say, if we have a crisis, it's the embarrassment of riches. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that we're no longer in a world where you can simply give everybody all the healthcare that is available. Each side of this debate has created the boogieman and monsters, like "We don't want let this program to come into existence because that will mean rationing." Well, I hate to tell you the news but as soon as medicine started being able to do incredible things that are very expensive, we started rationing."

"We now live in a world where technology has triumphed, in many ways, over death. The problem with that is that it's enormously expensive."

"The whole debate is twisted. These guys want you to be afraid this is going up. We should celebrate that. These guys say, "We don't want to ration." You're rationing now. The way to ration less is to make more good technical solutions."

"Every drug that's made is a gift from one generation to the next because, while it may be expensive now, it goes off patent and your kids will have it essentially for free."

"I think this debate shows a fundamental lack of vision, a lack of confidence, a lack of understanding of what's possible. And it's being fueled and fed by vested interests of people that have something to gain by making the general public, frankly, afraid of all sorts of things."