Why Health Care ‘Reform’ Will Fail
10 August 2009 12:24 pm by Taylor Marsh
But we also need to transform what is covered. If we want to make affordable health care available to the 48 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then the fundamental causes of many chronic diseases need to be addressed — which are primarily the lifestyle choices we make each day — rather than only literally or figuratively bypassing them. – Dr. Dean Ornish
Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Steny Hoyer have penned a whopper of an op-ed: ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate. Wanna bet? To some extent it’s already happened. But it does prove that the politics surrounding health care “reform” have nothing to do with actual reform or making anyone healthier. Just read the opening line: Americans have been waiting for nearly a century for quality, affordable health care. Never mind that the actual solution has been in our hands for decades.
But finally, someone spotlights the real issues behind health care and why whatever “reform” comes down will ultimately fail, both articles at Huffington Post. And neither has a thing to do with this drivel coming from Democrats, though it’s very safe to say that Republicans are miles worse.
Following the health care “reform” debate as closely as anyone, the entire discussion has left me cold. It’s all about what can the health care industry do for us, with absolutely no focus on what we have to do for ourselves. It’s why whatever is done on health care won’t really mean anything as to cost, because we’ll still expect the same things without focusing on how we get sick in the first place and how our own choices impact our health and lives. It’s about lifestyle, something I’ve been saying to friends and anyone who will listen for decades.
Many people are just too lazy. Want a prescription, a diagnosis, with a doctor deciding what you should do. Even as critical as health providers are to us all, because sometimes we do get hit from out of the blue, vitality and quality of life are mostly about what we do every day that makes us healthy or threatens our life.
Dr. Ornish has the cred, even as people like me have already learned the lesson of lifestyle. Though we don’t always do all that’s necessary to be healthy, letting our lives, work, relationships and other distractions take us down roads that make us sick. Some Americans do get it and our intent remains focused on adding to our own health through the choices we make on how to live our lives.
Lifestyle changes are not only as good as drugs but often even better. For example, a major study showed that lifestyle changes are even more effective than diabetes drugs such as metformin in reducing the incidence of diabetes in persons at high risk, with lower costs and fewer side-effects.
… .. In our experience, it is not enough to focus only on patient behaviors such as diet and exercise; we often need to work at a deeper level. Depression, loneliness, and lack of social support are also epidemic in our culture. These affect not only quality of life but also survival. Several studies has shown that people who are lonely, depressed, and isolated are many times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who are not. In part, this is mediated by the fact that they are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors when they feel this way, but also via mechanisms that are not well-understood. For example, many people smoke or overeat when they are stressed, lonely, or depressed.
What is sustainable is joy, pleasure, and freedom, not deprivation and austerity. When you eat a healthier diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate, and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you think more clearly, have more energy, need less sleep.
On and on this excellent post goes, all of the good doctor’s points ones that anyone serious about health care should read and take to heart.
But that’s not something Washington will stress, because telling the American people the truth about health care would mean demanding they do something about their own lifestyles.
I say this as someone who has never been rich in my life, that is not in terms of money. Choices have always had to be made on what I could afford, with vitamins always chosen over chips or some other empty food, though I love tortilla chips and salsa as much as anyone, snacking on them at cocktail hour at our place. I eat pizza too, but only on rare occasion, because not only are the empty carbs deadly and the fat content a killer, but I pay for it the next day in energy and vitality, which is the inspiration for everything I add (or subtract) to my life. So, no, my choices aren’t perfect every day, but the intent is there non stop. This has meant I’m healthy most of the time, which as you get older means more control over your quality of life, no matter how long you live. As someone who cured herself of debilitating, blinding migraines, trust me when I say I’ve been tested.
More tough love from Dr. Weil:
Washington is working on reform initiatives that focus on one problem: the fact that the system is too expensive (and consequently too exclusive.) Reform proposals, such as the “public option” for government insurance or calls for drug makers to drop prices, are aimed mostly at boosting affordability and access. Make it cheap enough, the thinking goes, and the 46 million Americans who can’t afford coverage will finally get their fair share.
But what’s missing, tragically, is a diagnosis of the real, far more fundamental problem, which is that what’s even worse than its stratospheric cost is the fact that American health care doesn’t fulfill its prime directive — it does not help people become or stay healthy. It’s not a health care system at all; it’s a disease management system, and making the current system cheaper and more accessible will just spread the dysfunction more broadly.
So, no matter what bill comes out of Congress, you’ll pardon me if I don’t get too exercised about the outcome. It won’t make any difference at all in the average American’s health, unless each of us quits asking what the health care industry can do for us, and instead start acting on what we can do for ourselves.
So, as Pelosi and Hoyer opine on “lower costs, better care”, and Republicans continue to act out in town hall brawls, the fundamental issue of how good health is manifested is once again ignored.
Quit kidding yourself, America.
You can’t even write about the obese or purposely fat without being scolded that you’re being prejudice. We should be as hard on them as we are on smokers, just to see what that would manifest in health care savings, not to mention on quality of life of Americans from all ages.
Have it all, no responsibility required doesn’t work in life and it sure doesn’t work when it comes to your health. Without prevention and each person taking on their own lifestyle restructuring, the health of the average American is not going to change one iota.
But just maybe health care “reform” will allow more people to manage their diseases, as Dr. Weil puts it. We’ll see. Just don’t kid yourself that this is actually “reform”.
