How Euro's Woes Could Affect Economic -- and Individual -- Health

Feb. 25, 2010— -- Calvin Coolidge, U.S. president during the Roaring Twenties, said, "The chief business of the American people is business."

Today, health care is the biggest business in the United States, so the success of the health care industry and its component companies has become crucial to the business of the nation. What is especially important to America's business is the portion of the health-care industry that creates goods the United States can export.

Today, close to 50 percent of the revenue from the top 10 grossing U.S. pharmaceutical companies comes from international sales. International revenue from just these 10 companies totals close to $120 billion, which is equivalent to almost one-third the gross domestic product of Greece.

These businesses thrive on overseas sales because U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers are leaders in discovering new chemical and biological medicines to treat disease and American device manufacturers have revolutionized medical care, from introduction of small stents used for treating heart blockages to giant magnetic resonance machines that give clear pictures of what is happening inside the human body.

Just as Americans began to feel it was safe to read the business page of their newspapers and turn on the nightly news, we learned that several European Union countries, including Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal, are facing economic difficulties.

The Germans and the French say they are in no mood or position to bail out these weak sister states and economists on both sides of the Atlantic are speculating about what would happen if the European Union breaks up or the euro currency falls.

It took the United States several months and a lot of haggling to reach an answer to the immediate currency problems the country faced a year ago; imagine how much harder it will be for Europe, with the conflicting interests of several nations, to take meaningful action.