Amid political promises that pride themselves on reducing numbers on a bill, it is necessary to pause and ask: what do those numbers really measure? A lower cost per hospitalization or per medication, presented as an indisputable success, can hide a perverse logic: that of a system that has turned a fundamental human right into a commercial transaction. The premise is misleading because it confuses economic access with access to health. The former is an accounting variable; the latter, a civilizational commitment.

The Paradox of "More for Less"

There is a profound risk in celebrating only price reductions. In a model where health is a business, what is the hidden incentive? A lower price per hospitalization can translate, in practice, into a higher volume of patients processed in less time, with fewer human and technological resources. A cheap generic drug, without proper quality controls and follow-up, can generate a cycle of chronic illness: the patient returns, buys more, becomes a "recurring customer." What seems like immediate relief for the wallet can be, in the long run, a trap for well-being. Quality cannot be the adjustment variable when we are talking about human lives.

From Commodity to Right: The Lesson We Ignored

The COVID-19 pandemic was a brutal mirror. For a moment, the world saw the distinctions between public and private systems collapse, between rich and poor facing a common virus. And, significantly, at the peak of the crisis, the response did not come from market competition, but from international scientific cooperation, from the (however imperfect) sharing of knowledge, and from the idea, however fragile, that global health is a common good. It was a glimpse of an essential principle: health is a right by the simple fact of being born on this planet, not a privilege subject to the ability to pay.

President Trump and I are doing everything we can to pull back the curtain on prices for hospital stays, physician visits, and prescription drugs. We’re delivering on those promises, working to make your health care more transparent, more accessible, and more convenient, with no… pic.twitter.com/8z2Q1yxp0d

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) January 12, 2026

The failure of many public systems lies not in their public nature, but in their deliberate abandonment. An underfunded public hospital, with endless waiting lists and exhausted professionals, is not proof that the "public doesn't work," but evidence of political sabotage. An infernal cycle is thus created: the system is stripped of resources, its quality deteriorates, desperate people turn to private alternatives (if they can afford them), and then that deterioration is used as an argument to privatize even more. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that sacrifices the most vulnerable.

The Metaphor of Living Water: The Alienation of the Essential

The deepest critique goes beyond health systems and points to the core of our civilizational model. The question "why do we pay for water?" is one of the most radical we can ask. We take an essential, free, and common element, lock it in a bottle, put a price on it, and declare that it thus has "value." We have done the same with health: we have taken care, compassion, ancestral and scientific knowledge—the "living water" of well-being—and turned it into a standardized product, "dead water" sold on a pharmacy shelf or in a hospital room.

Animals do not pay for water. They simply are and, therefore, access what they need to live. We, on the other hand, have built a world where the most essential things for life—water, health, shelter—are mediated by a transaction. Are we really more advanced?

No, you are not crazy. You are awake.

Stopping to question this is not a sign of madness, but of lucidity. It is rejecting the hypnosis of empty metrics and superficial promises. It is remembering that a society is judged by how it cares for its sick, its elderly, its most fragile. Reducing a price is an administrative task. Guaranteeing a life with dignified health is an act of justice.

The challenge is not just to make health "more affordable," but to transform it from the roots: to stop seeing it as an expense on a national balance sheet or a market niche, and to begin recognizing it as the fundamental pact of a society that prides itself on being human. True transparency is not in the itemized bill, but in not having to choose between economic ruin and avoidable suffering. Until we understand that, we will keep paying for dead water, while longing, unknowingly, for the living water that was stolen from us.