Health Care Crisis: Pt. 2

Health Care Crisis: Pt. 2

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.  

–Walter Cronkite

Last week’s Impetus discussed the dilemma our nation’s health crisis due to the increasing burden of treating and managing chronic disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), treating people with chronic diseases accounts form 86% of our nation’s health care costs which is currently $3.2 trillion per year, or nearly $10.000 per person.

The Milken Institute issued an important benchmark report October 2, 2007 recommending a major overhaul of how America deals with chronic diseases. The most profound of these findings and recommendations were that “doctors and other health-care providers should be paid to manage and prevent chronic illnesses, instead of getting most of their income from treatments.” 

Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, a medical journalist who formerly worked as a medical doctor, warns that the existing health-care system too often focuses on financial incentives over health or science. Rosenthal's book, An American Sickness, examines the deeply rooted problems of the existing health-care system and offers suggestions for a way forward. She notes that under the current system, it's far more lucrative to provide a lifetime of treatments than a cure.

"One expert in the book joked ... that if we relied on the current medical market to deal with polio, we would never have a polio vaccine," Rosenthal says. "Instead we would have iron lungs in seven colors with iPhone apps."

Here is a good analogy that a friend of mine expressed to me a few days ago that really puts things in to perspective. Imagine taking your car to a mechanic and being told that the “treatment” for your automobile is going to be $1,200.

The problem won’t be fixed, but the treatment if continued will help the car function. However, the treatment may not be for every car and some cars may experience several side-effects.  But don’t worry, we have another treatment for the side-effects when you bring your car back. And then to top it all off, what if you learned that the third leading cause of total mechanical breakdowns were a result of the procedures performed by this garage? I trust many of you would seek alternative solutions for your chronic car conditions. We could always just get a new car. This is the same methodology that many of us are experiencing with our health, the problem is we can’t just get a new body, but we can change the way that we are sustaining and supporting it.

If there was ever a time for a Self Care Awakening it is NOW.  

How about not having the problem to begin with? How about having a preventative maintenance program? How about more natural and less invasive ways to help with a condition than just treating and masking the problem? How about solutions with side-benefits instead of side-effects?

The four main principles of the Self Care Awakening are not a panacea for all chronic conditions. There are many other factors involved depending on the disease being examined. However, these principles are vital to the health of us all irrespective of our current status of health.

All can benefit from reducing our body burden of toxic chemicals, being hydrated, well rested and maintaining a healthy weight.

Chronic disease is not a normal part of life. Up to 80% of chronic conditions can be prevented. My hopes are that this information and corresponding Self Care presentations have enlightened and empowered anyone to employ and share our battle cry for the Self Care Awakening,

Be Healthy by Choice, not by Chance.

Health Care Crisis: Pt. 1

Health Care Crisis

Our nation faces a health crisis due to the increasing burden of chronic disease. Currently, 7 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States are chronic diseases, and almost 50% of Americans live with at least one chronic illness. People who suffer from chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, obesity, and arthritis experience limitations in function, health, activity, and work, affecting the quality of their lives as well as the lives of their families.

Health care is on track to be our nation’s biggest industry. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.8 percent in 2015, and U.S. health-care spending increased 5.8 percent to reach $3.2 trillion per year, or nearly $10.000 per person. This figure is more than two-and-a-half times more than the other countries of the world. What drives this business is treating and managing chronic disease, basically sick care. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), treating people with chronic diseases accounts form 86% of our nation’s health care costs. I find this totally unacceptable given that 80% of these diseases are preventable.

The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country, yet we are rated last in health care when compared to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.  A recent report by the Commonwealth Fund finds Americans are more likely than people in other countries to have more than one chronic condition such as arthritis, heart disease, asthma, high blood pressure or diabetes. It found 28 percent of Americans have multiple chronic conditions, compared to 14 percent in Britain and the Netherlands, 18 percent in France and 22 percent in Canada.

Nearly 70% of our population are on some type of prescription medication. We fill over 4.3 billion prescriptions per year. Many chronic and degenerative conditions are becoming epidemic and the United States currently leads the world in almost every disease and chronic condition.  Although the U.S represents 4.4% of the world’s population, we consume 75% of the world’s pharmaceutical drugs.

The best business strategy is to grow your customer base, and then convert them to repeat or permanent customers. The treatment of chronic conditions with pharmaceutical management has epitomized this strategy. Noted economist Paul Zane Pilzer makes this disconcerting deduction:

“It is more profitable for medical suppliers to produce products consumers use for the rest of their lives than to make products that a consumer might use only once.   Invariably, this means developing products that treat the symptoms of diseases rather than the cause or the cure.”

In the strict terms of dollars and cents, comedian Dick Gregory is accurate when he suspiciously states when describing the pharmaceutical industry, “Patients that don't die are good for business!” 

Drug companies spend $4 billion a year on ads to consumers shaping and contributing to our belief that there is a pill for everything. Ask your doctor about…whatever drug they are talking about? It’s what we are taught and hear multiple times a day in the media. More than 80% of those age 65+ regularly take prescription drugs, half of which take four or more.  If drugs were the answer, then we should be the healthiest people on the planet!

There is another answer and we all need to Be Healthy by Choice, not by Chance because if we leave our health to chance, chances are we are not going to be healthy.

To be continued next week…