Home   >   News   >   Franklin on Health Care

Franklin on Health Care

By on February 25, 2012

“All would live long, but none would be old,” observed Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. At a time when men lived an average of 41 years, Franklin lived to be 84. “I am in the prime of senility,” he told friends near the end. He loved wine, and beer and suffered from gout, cheerfully. He wrote a short humorous treatise on bodily noises and smells.

He was not a fan of the medical profession. “Beware of young doctors and old barbers,” he warned. “God heals and the doctor takes the fees.”

The documents for the new government he helped craft did not address health care. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he wrote privately . “To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.” “Success has ruin’d many a man.” “Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”  “Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.”

What would he think if he could return today? He had his finger on one of the problems that has plagued American health care from the start. “Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it,” blood-letting being the ‘over care’ of his day.  Today one of every six dollars spent in the US is on something related to health care. Yet our life expectancy and self-reported health status lags many poorer countries.

“Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.” he counseled an earlier generation.

Has that occasion arrived?

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

Franklin Reading Penn Square Post?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Godfrey

 

 

About Tom Godfrey

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

HTML tags are not allowed.