Well everyone is asking me my opinion on the new healthcare reform. I applaud our president for sticking to his campaign promise at the risk of his re-election. As for healthcare reform… that is not what this is. It is insurance and access reform with the end result is selling more drugs.
My biggest fear is we are going to have greater access to a healthcare system that does not work. The working poor will now have access, but to what. More drug interventions. Drugs are the number one cause of death in the US. These are drugs that are appropriately prescribed and appropriately taken. So we will just have more people on more drugs resulting in more deaths. We will put more pharmaceutical band-aids on more symptoms. Well that is great for the Drug companies.
We still are not doing anything to help treat cause or improve prevention of disease. We already spend more per capita than any other nation in the world for “healthcare”. However we rank about 42nd in the world for outcomes. So we should put more people into that system?
How about giving people access to Naturopathic doctors that can spend time with them so they can connect the dots and start addressing the cause of their symptoms. The typical MD visit is 7-12 minutes. All you can do in that time frame is ask what your symptom is and prescribe a band-aid. I spend 1.5-2 hours in an initial consultation. Now what is going to happen when we have more people accessing care when there are not enough doctors to go around? Will we go down to 3 minute visit? Only 2% of MD’s graduating today are going into general practice. Most are going in to specialties and super speciaties because you can’t earn a living as a general practice physician.
The bottom line is still the same. Health insurance is like car insurance. It is good for a wreck. If you want true healthcare you need to pay out of pocket. We are willing to do this for our car and that is replaceable, your body and health are not.