The Socioeconomic Milieu

As the election is coming up, I wanted to write a quick post to say that health care is determined by so many factors beyond which hospital one goes to, the doctors one sees, the drugs one can obtain, the insurance one has. For example, education, profession, and poverty have a remarkable effect on one's health; a study of civil servants in England showed a dramatic difference in mortality based on one's job. We cannot tease out cause and effect, correlation and causation, but it reminds me that our responsibility as physicians extends beyond thinking of just health care delivery, pharmaceutical companies, and questions of insurance but also those other public goods which will, in time, translate to healthier, happier, more active patients.