Medicine During the Pandemic Recession
I
n June of 2020, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the nation was in a recession. They wrote, “a peak in monthly economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in February 2020.”1 Often mentioned by economists and politicians, when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. Although the saying dates to Austrian politician Klemens von Metternich in the 1800s, its modern use reflects the U.S. superpower status. Part of that economic juggernaut is our exemplary healthcare system, one that is very costly per capita but produces high-quality services for the Americans who can access them. Some have argued the healthcare sector is recession-proof. A more accurate description would be recession-resistant but, as we have seen throughout most of 2020, even the healthcare industry is deeply affected by the global pandemic of COVID-19, as “eventually that [resistance] wears off. The impacts of a recession don't skip the healthcare sector, but they do hit it later than most areas, and the industry also takes longer to bounce back,” experts have warned.2
Impacts on US Healthcare “The drop in health care spending earlier this year was unprecedented in U.S. history,” says Jonathan Ketcham, Ph.D., Earl G., and Gladys C. Davis Distinguished Research Professor in Business, W.P. Carey School of Business. When looking at recession effects on healthcare, up until COVID19, it would be safe to assume that the industry is truly immune to the effects of a recession, as seen in the graph. It is a curious phenomenon to see so many healthcare jobs lost in a global health crisis. This gives us a glimpse into how the healthcare industry makes its money: “treating patients for a deadly illness is far less profitable than offering them elective surgeries”,3 quoted from Isaac Arnsdorf.4 Healthcare does seem to be faring better than other industries. The rate of job loss in healthcare is less than the rest of the economy. However, it is important to note that during the Great Recession, as nearly all other jobs were declining rapidly, jobs in healthcare continued to rise at a good rate. Some economists have suggested that this
Fall 2020 | arizonaphysician.com
23
