First off, we are not talking about HEALTHcare.  We are talking about MEDICAL care.  Totally different animal.  Most doctors do not engage in health care, they are in the business of medical care. If they were treating your health, you would be getting well and not be on prescription medications long term.  They would be teling you how to remove the dietary and lifestyle issues that contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease and diabetes.  Most people believe when they get a diagnosis of adult onset diabetes (Type 2) that it's something they have to manage for the rest of their lives with pills of needles.  Nonsense.  They weren't born with diabetes, they developed it over the course of their lives, usually with poor diet and lack of exercise.  They didn't come from the womb with hypertension and heart disease.  These are LIFESTYLE diseases, and they are not a life sentence if you take the time to learn about how to restore your health.

Just don't expect your doctor to tell you this or help you in the process. Doctors treat your medical conditions.  They go to school for long periods of time to receive advanced training in the practice of medicine, not the practice of health restoration.  They do not get an education in health and healing, they get an education in handling trauma, surgery, and pharmacology.

We do not have a health care crisis in this country, we have a crisis in medical care. And it costs so much because we have come to expect quick fixes for conditions that we've spent 20 or 30 years developing. Instead of learning for ourselves, we have believed the media and the advertisers that there are chemical and technological solutions for any abuse we give to our bodies.

Healing is not the purview of physicians. It is a natural process that happens without our bodies. We are truly fearfully and wonderfully made, with an internal machinery designed to repair itself. When we eat foods devoid of nutrients we don't give our bodies the fuel to run properly.  A mechanic can tell you what would happen if you filled your gas tank with Coca Cola and tried to drive a few hundred miles. Your car wasn't meant to be powered by soda, and neither is your body. Yet we drive our bodies day after day on sugar, refined junk foods, and chemicals that are not fit for long term consumption and wonder why we get sick.

Taking care of your health is up to YOU, not the federal government or the state government, or even your doctor.  They didn't put that artery clogging junk into your mouth and make you eat it.  The medical facilities are not benevolent charities.  They make their money by treating the sick and injured.  Don't expect them to be at the forefront when it comes to telling you how NOT to use their services. And for those who have abused their body machines to the point of no return, creating chronic conditions, those medical facilities are necessary.  But for most of us, a little time spent changing our diets, doing more walking and less sitting, drinking more water and cutting our stress load would pay off richly in restored health and save billions of dollars now being spent in the doctor's office and pharmacy.

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Skewed Economic Incentives
written by Mark, September 09, 2008

Hi Rose,

Government involvement in the "health care" system have skewed the incentives. Doctors no longer work for the patient. Because of laws that employers must offer their employees health insurance, most people have their medical care paid for by insurance companies. The insurance company is now the doctor's customer, with a schedule of allowed services and products that the insurance company will purchase depending on the symptoms a patient presents. The patient is just an opportunity for doctors to bill the real customer. Doctors who serve their patients in this system will gradually lose out to those doctors or clinics who serve the insurance companies.

We swapped over to a high-deductible health plan when I started working for myself last year. As a result, we pay cash when we go to doctors. We find we are having to educate doctors on how NOT to do business as usual, but rather how to provide advice and services that serve our (that is, patients') needs directly. It hasn't happened yet, but I imagine that sooner or later, a doctor will refuse to treat us on this basis--for example, if we decide to use a conservative treatment instead of a higher cost treatment, the doctor may worry that he will risk the liability of not following the standard practice that suits insurance companies.

You will probably have picked up on the constant theme that runs through my comments--things don't work because of government involvement. That's because government is force. It is the only institution that has the legitimate power to use guns and jails to "solve problems". When members of society are forced to follow government rules, it means they cannot do what they would have normally done to solve their own problems. People have to follow the one-size-fits-all rule that 'experts' in Washington, DC have decided fits their political goals. As a general rule, if something is broken, you can find the government behind it.

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You're Absolutely Right
written by Chris Berry, September 14, 2008

The term healthcare is so widely misused in this country that we rarely stop to think about what it really means. Most people use it when referring to health insurance, which by your reasoning should be called medical insurance. Sadly, that term isn't right either since most policies don't meet the basic definition of insurance at all. I've written a couple of posts on the subject that I hope you will check out on my site.

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