The State of Health Care

The healthcare field used to be one that was designed to help people. That was the only goal. A doctor would keep the people in his area healthy and would be provided for in return- money, food, whatever the family could give. There was not as much complication of competing industries. It was simple. Doctor. Patient.

Nowadays, receiving healthcare is much more complicated. I don't know if anyone ever thought that the most asked question in healthcare would be, "Will my insurance cover that?"

I can understand the plight of the patient- I am one too! In fact, throughout medical school, I was uninsured. I did what I could do stay healthy, but I went 2 years without a physical or bloodwork and 4 years without a visit to a dentist (I'm happy to report, I've seen one since, and still have no cavities!). We paid out of pocket for the birth of our son because our insurance plan wouldn't cover a midwife. Healthcare has become so expensive that many of us are unable to provide this basic need for ourselves and our families. And it's all our fault!!

Medicine has come a long way from the bucolic times I describe. Our ability to save lives has increased immensely. But so has our need for those interventions! We have focused so much on technology, medications, and advancement that we have let go of the basics. Our health insurance doesn't usually cover services that teach us how to live well- how to stay healthy and avoid needing to utilize these life-saving surgeries, medications, and interventions. So, we don't emphasize them. And we are the ones who are suffering for it. And paying the bill for it!

The Center for Disease Control estimates that 90% of our healthcare dollar is spent treating conditions that are completely preventable. 90%! Can you imagine if we could cut that number even in half?!? Not only driving insurance costs down, but also being surrounded by people who were healthier- less cancer, less depression, less heart disease and diabetes, less arthritis.

In my opinion, the state of healthcare today is actually a model of sick-care. We don't know how to teach people to stay healthy or to intervene early on in illness to be able to get back to normal.

This is what naturopathic care specializes in! We work from the ground up. We teach people to go as far as they can on their own, through diet and lifestyle interventions. We then add in interventions as needed, which may include natural products or pharmaceutical medicines. But the point is that our goal is never only to be disease-free. It is much more than that. The goal is to bring you to your state of OPTIMAL health! This is wellness-based health care. It is true HEALTH care. And it's what we need in order to save our wallets and more importantly, save our lives!