Real Health Care Reform

Like many other Americans, I am spending a part of each day watching the debate over health care reform descend into a shouting match between people who really want to debate our future and those who are transfixed by the corporate pharmaceutical and health insurance industries sponsored scare campaign. I can only hope that these underhanded defenders of the status quo fail in their attempt to continue business as usual. The facts are self-evident to anyone who will seriously listen—health insurance companies have seen their profits increase by astronomical proportions in recent years. Sometimes they have increased 10-fold and more. This industry has a vested interest in keeping the present system in place and they are using well meaning, but uninformed people to try to stop any change. The facts about our health care system are as follows (a quote from the World Health Organization:

“The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18th. Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second-placed Italy.”

If you want to read the report for yourself just click on the URL below:

http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html

I am living in Spain, a country that has government-run health care and I see it in operation every day. Our apartment is just around the corner from the municipal clinic. I’ve been in this clinic and it appears to be well run and efficient. We can’t access it for care because we are not Spanish citizens, but we have consulted a doctor there for a recommendation concerning private physicians we could consult to meet our needs. The doctor saw us within 10 minutes and made his recommendation free of charge. Even foreigners who have health emergencies are treated in this local clinic. My prescription drugs cost me a fraction of their cost in the US (often less than my co-pay would be) and the quality is equal to the quality in the US. Government-run health care is not perfect, but it is so much better than what we experience in the US that I would be in favor of a “single-payer” approach for the US.

But, as bad as the current political mess is, it masks a more urgent issue—scientific medicine in the US or anywhere else doesn’t really deliver the best health care. Here is a quote from Dr. Weil, a strong advocate of alternative medicine:

“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.”

I participate in scientific medicine as little as I can. I rely for the most part on treatment modalities that aren’t covered by Spain’s government system or my $700 per month health insurance in the US. (That figure is in addition to the Medicare system that I am a part of.) I find that the alternatives I use give me better health and a better quality of life than reliance on scientific medicine. I am in the process of getting off of my prescription drugs and am finding that I have increased vitality and no return of the symptoms that put me on those drugs in the first place. After we get finished with the shouting and name calling that is going on right now, perhaps we can consider whether we might be better off with less scientific medicine. That will be REAL health care reform.