Health Care's Oil Problem

Today’s idea: Health care faces a threat from oil — and not just the deep-frying variety. Medicine’s dependence on fossil fuels and inevitable higher oil prices will give the American health system a shock, an article says: “Think massive heart attack.”
Medicine | Petroleum gets pretty much zero attention in the debate over fixing health care, writes Judith D. Schwartz in Miller-McCune magazine. But the medical system is dependent on cheap crude in myriad ways, from petroleum-derived pharmaceuticals and instruments to remote rural ambulance runs. And, she says, it’s only a matter of time before global demand for oil pushes production to its limits and prices dramatically upward — meaning rising medical costs during an economic disruption in which many could lose their jobs and health coverage.

“Oil is the glue in our medical system that holds it all together,” says a consultant on energy and health. And it has always been thus, suggests a study in Public Health Reports, which links the remarkable improvement in health over the last 150 years to cheap, easily accessible energy. The study urges preparedness for “peak petroleum” and conservation in a health care infrastructure that has long favored speed and convenience.

New York Times