A drop of water falls on the pitcher’s mound at Boston’s Fenway Park — immediately followed by two drops and four drops and eight drops. If the rate of falling water continues to double, how long will it take before water drowns the entire the stadium?

Fifty-six minutes.

“You don’t even realize the problem until the outfield is wet,” said Dr. J. Michael Epps, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist who practices at the Woman’s Clinic.

Dr. Epps uses the Fenway Park analogy to shed light on the issues the world faces regarding health care. Young people are waiting longer to marry and have children, and they are having fewer children, decreasing the birth rate. At the same time, people are living longer, and there are fewer people to take care of them.

As a nation, we are spending money we do not have, he said. And it will cost more and more money to care for the aging population.

While it’s important to save for retirement and take care of yourself, that is not attainable for many people. That makes the exponential curve, which threatens social security expenditures, all the more important to address realistically.

“People may be born equally, but they don’t have equal opportunities. Ranting and raving about politics isn’t the answer. We’re not dealing with it realistically.”

When Social Security was created in this country almost 80 years ago, 20 or 30 people paid for one elderly person, he said. Today, three people pay for one.

“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “You’ve got to do something about this. That’s what’s facing us.”

Dr. Epps, who is a moderate conservative on fiscal issues, said the Affordable Care Act, while not perfect, was an attempt to address the looming health care crisis. It was patterned after a reasonably successful program in Massachusetts — a state that has not gone bankrupt or fallen into the Atlantic Ocean, he said. “The Affordable Care Act is not the end of civilization as we know it.”

But it does force change in the health care industry. Electronic health records, for example, require clinics to input patient information in a certain way or they won’t be paid by insurance companies, he said. Doctors are required to do more administrative work, and productivity can suffer as physicians learn a new system.

“I just want to see patients and provide an honest service,” Dr. Epps said. “The transition was really hard for me.”

The Affordable Care Act is shaped by big insurance companies because medicine is big business, he said. But it attempts to use evidence and statistics to determine the best treatment for patients.

Despite privacy concerns that follow the security of personal information, electronic health records — while not a magic fix — are good, he said. “Why are we doing it? Because it’s more efficient. We’re getting things done.”

They enable the collection of massive amounts of data to guide the medical community in cost-effective medicine. For example, the national task force addressed routine mammography approximately four years ago. It correctly but poorly conveyed that low-risk women benefit from a baseline mammogram at age 50 just as well as women who receive a baseline mammogram at ago 40.

“Of course, the difficulty is defining truly ‘low risk,’ especially when it is such an emotionally sensitive and common cancer,” Dr. Epps said. “Whenever you have a medical concern, it’s best to consult your health care provider.”

But massive amounts of data guide us to evidence-based medicine, which improves care, he said. The evolving health care system is attempting to help the most people possible in the best and most economical way.

“This is where we are. This is where we’re going. Things are changing. This is a great dilemma, and this is an issue we’re going to have to address.”

Ultimately, the Affordable Care Act took effect in January, and it’s too early to call it a failure, he said. Instead, people should be respectful of doctors and surgeons — professionals who are passionate about practicing medicine.

There is no perfect health care system anywhere in the world, he said. And as a society, we need to work constructively to find solutions to the issue of caring for an aging population that has fewer younger people to support it.

“We are a village, and we do have to take care of each other.”