Three Reasons Our Healthcare System Is Broken
1. Root cause
I could write an entire book at the records of how our
modern-day healthcare machine has evolved because the Forties, but I’ll hold it
short and say it's far the first-rate within the global at treating acute,
emergency conditions.
Run over via a automobile? Ski twist of fate? Got a belly
computer virus touring in India? You guess you need the total electricity of
the American healthcare machine to store your existence.
And this strength — to store your life from such things as
polio, influenza, cholera, freak injuries – is how our entire gadget of
medication advanced over the past century. And it has completed that, surely
well.
But what it hasn’t carried out nicely, and didn’t recollect
back within the day, is that with chronic fitness problems, without attending
to the “why” or the root cause of say eczema, or constipation, or migraines,
you’re just papering over or overlaying signs and symptoms.
When you try this, positive you may lessen or even dispose
of that symptom briefly, however you are also probable inflicting damage by now
not identifying why it’s going on (it's miles going to get worse), or by using
the use of steroids to suppress your immune machine or by way of introducing
drugs or surgical procedures with side results, that could introduce a whole
host of different health issues.
I’ve heard it defined as a game of “Wack-a-mole” wherein you
deal with one symptom, after which your frame pops up with another like “hiya,
I want help in right here! I attempted to tell you ultimate week with that rash
however you left out it so here I am again with this belly ache!”
The traditional technique to chronic fitness issues creates
a first-rate amount of treatments, wasted money and time and on the cease of
it, hasn’t gotten your body again to a nation wherein it has healed itself and
can operate without some form of crutch, like a drug, indefinitely.
2. Fee for sickness, now not price for health
You’ve in all likelihood observed that your health
practitioner, hospitals, labs, quite lots the whole system best receives paid
when you get ill. If you live healthy, they make a lot much less money. The
more treatments they do or drugs they prescribe, the greater they make.
People reply to incentives, it’s human nature, we all do!
Our healthcare gadget gives every incentive to preserve treating signs instead
of digging into root reasons and permitting the frame to heal itself because
simply … if they did, the payments might give up there.
When I worked with hospitals, there have been a few programs
in Medicaid (medical insurance for poor human beings) and Medicare (medical
health insurance for senior residents) that attempted to incentivize hospitals
and health structures to recognition on fitness results — i.E. If you could
preserve this character with heart failure out of the hospitals and
theoretically getting better at domestic, we’ll come up with some extra money.
The future of these packages is uncertain due to the
uncertainty of the Affordable Care Act, i.E. Obamacare, however hopefully the
idea of profitable doctors and hospitals for keeping patients wholesome and
getting them fully better after a fitness scare vs. For doing limitless
remedies sticks around.
3. Insurance and fitness freedom
Most folks have some sort of health insurance and I’m sure
you’re pretty familiar with the concept of “in-network” doctors vs.
“out-of-community” and the things that are “protected” vs. Not. Insurance
groups (or the government when you have Medicaid or Medicare) define exactly
which styles of treatments we can get for which things, and which varieties of
docs we can see.
This system has created a scenario where, in case you’d want
to try acupuncture to deal with returned pain, or a Chinese herbalist to treat
a intestine difficulty, or a new, experimental treatment for despair and you
don’t have piles of cash laying around, you could’t due to the fact your
coverage won’t pay for it.
Why? The entire system of paying or reimbursing the patient
or a health facility for healthcare is based totally on disease codes so most
insurance businesses say “NOPE” to covering things that can be more
preventative like acupuncture or chiropractic take care of slight returned ache
if you desire to keep it from turning into a full blown harm or require ache
medicines or surgical operation later. Without a disorder code, the claim can’t
also be processed.
If you are trying to save you disorder, well, for the
maximum element, you could’t use the cash you placed into health insurance for
that! Despite overwhelming proof that the subsequent things are verified to be
medicinal, natural meals, acupuncture, a yoga magnificence package deal or
supplements all could no longer be included.
What this means is there may be a loss of “health freedom”
for those who don’t have cash to spend on their health out of pocket. And
lamentably those are the folks that are usually the sickest.
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