The cost of medical care has become a favorite topic for denunciation, prognostication, adjudication, and physician vilification. Blame is being attached to physicians' fees, advanced technology, unnecessary surgery, pharmaceutical profiteering, surplus hospital beds, the increasing number of aged persons, and salary increases awarded to hospital personnel. Ringing denunciation of the high cost of medical care is splendid grist for the political mill but provides nothing beneficial to the public or to their health.
Criticism is leveled constantly at our health care system because it fails to prolong life or to prevent some diseases, but seldom is acknowledgment given to the relief of suffering, the cure of illness, or the restoration of useful life by modern medical care. The complex often referred to as "the health care industry" contributes more to American life and prosperity than just the prevention of disease or the treatment of illness. It is one of the