My young patient seems incapable of curing herself without intervention. Health care today seems as equally incapable of self-cure, and a simple surgery may not solve the problem. However, radical excision by well-intended but growingly desperate budget-swinging governmental hatchet men may be the mandated solution that will try to cure the disease while killing the patient.

In a recent legislative meeting, one of the solutions to the difficult problem of out-of-control Medicaid costs was to put an arbitrary limit on the increased spending. Caps freeze the current craziness. Without dramatic system rethinking and reconstruction with some outside authoritative assistance, investment in digital technologies, transparency in transactions and support for primary preventative care, number cutting alone will just wound the patient. Without understanding the interconnecting complexities, just whacking something off makes the system limp along still sick of mind and heart.

So where is the cure both for my patient and for the American health-care system? My patient is getting help. She is learning to reconstruct her whole thought processes about who she is. Health care needs the same mending. It demands dialogue, not daggers. Curative scalpels, yes, but mutilating blades are to be left at the door. It craves a real cure before an untimely self-inflicted death. It needs it stat.

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Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com