I know that title is going to bother some people. Good. After more than seven decades of paying attention to my own health, I have become increasingly convinced that the system we call modern medicine has very little to do with keeping healthy people healthy.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t brilliant doctors, nurses, researchers and other people working inside it. Of course there are. And it doesn’t mean modern medicine hasn’t accomplished remarkable things. My problem is with the system itself—how it is funded, what it rewards, what gets researched, what gets promoted, and where the money ultimately comes from.

And there is an awful lot of money involved.

Follow the Money

This is where my skepticism begins. Medical research does not take place in some pristine world completely separated from commerce. Pharmaceutical companies are businesses. They invest enormous amounts of money developing, testing, marketing and selling products, and naturally they expect a return on that investment.

The problem begins when we pretend that business has nothing to do with medicine. When enormous financial interests can influence which questions receive research money, which treatments get the most attention and which products get promoted, I think we have every right to ask a very simple question: Is keeping people healthy really the primary objective?

I don’t believe it is. A healthy person who exercises, eats reasonably well, maintains strength, stays active as they age and rarely needs a prescription is not much of a customer.

Where Is Prevention?

This is the part that has bothered me for most of my life. We call it a healthcare system, but much of the time I think it would be more accurately described as a disease-care system.