Want a new nose? Overweight but don’t want to exercise or diet? No problem. It’s commonplace in the health care world these days. Not only are we using these services more, we’re considering them practically medically necessary.
The experts are calling it “medicalization. ”
In fact, according to a May report in Social Science and Medicine, Americans spent around $77 billion dollars on treatments, pills, and procedures thought to cure what were formerly non-medical problems — and that was our spending level five years ago.
Cue the collective “gasp ” as to what we’re spending today in 2010. So what gives? Are we really taking advantage of our medical technology for cosmetic purposes?
It seems so.
The Social Science and Medicine study was the first to put a price on this so-called medicalization, the process of defining non-medical problems as medical problems that garner treatment. And apparently the price of over-medicalization is helping increase health insurance and health care costs. We’re talking procedures and drugs to “cure ” obesity, wrinkles, and even sparse eyelashes.
Basically, if we were less vain, we’d save big on health care.
The research suggests that if Americans stopped spending the big bucks on cosmetic problems masking as medical conditions in need of treatment, we’d significantly lower overall health care costs.
Just to hammer the point home a bit further, here’s what we spend annually for some of these medical services: $12.4 billion for cosmetic procedures and plastic surgery, $1.1 billion for infertility, $10.9 billion for anxiety disorders, $1.8 billion for sleep disorders, $1.1 billion for erectile dysfunction, and $1.1 for male pattern baldness.
Thanks, Hollywood.