SEARCH:
Sign in | Join | Help
search Mercola.com
 
FREE Subscription 
The World’s Most Popular Natural Health Newsletter
Thinking Differently About Health Care

health careThe American health care system is on life-support. Priced at nearly $8,000 a year per American, and soon to be 20 percent of the GDP, it’s more expensive by 40-60 percent than health care systems in any other industrial country, and totals nearly half the health care budget of the entire world. Yet it leaves 48 million Americans uncovered by health insurance and produces remarkably poor results.

According to the fascinating article linked below, it might help to consider American health as a house. Health care is the -- very expensive -- roof, the final protection against illness. In some ways it’s a preventive system, but mostly it’s sickness care.

The Health Care “House” is Falling Apart

In most other countries, the roof is a simpler affair. These health care systems rely much more on prevention. Yet the people in those “houses” live longer, healthier lives. That’s because in those other countries, the foundation and the walls of the house are stronger, with fewer cracks to let in the cold.

Start with the foundation. That’s the head start toward health that children in most other rich countries receive. In part because of better pre-natal care, infant mortality in all other industrial countries is lower than in the United States, which ranks 42nd in the world.

In every country in the world except the United States, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea, mothers, and often, fathers, are guaranteed paid time off from work to take care of newborns. In many cases, such “family leave” extends for up to a year or more.

The first wall is lifestyle.

Our tax system subsidizes producers of sugars and fats and our marketing system relentlessly advertises unhealthy foods. At the same time, Americans tend to work longer hours than people in other rich countries.

Wall number two is stress relief.

It’s no secret in the field of public health that stress is a killer. Several factors make American life particularly stressful. Stress can result from insecurity. As the American social safety net has been gutted in recent years and job protections have been reduced, life in America is far more insecure than in other rich countries.

Stress is also the result of time pressures and overwork. Breaks from a stressful workplace are seen by Europeans as yet another way to improve health.

The third wall is social connection.

It’s a given in the field of public health that social connection strengthens immune systems and improves physical well-being.

Yet America is an increasingly lonely country. More and more people, and especially older Americans, live alone, far more than in other rich countries. A recent study found that the average American has only two close friends he or she can turn to. A quarter have none at all.

The fourth wall is a safe environment.

Americans rank at the bottom in child safety, with the highest rates of accidents among children. Partly, time pressure on American parents leave them less able to supervise their children. Other studies show extremely high rates of accidents in the workplace compared to other nations.

Finally, and this is no small matter, every other industrial country guarantees its workers paid time off from work when they are sick; only the U.S. does not. Those countries know that without paid time off, workers will come to work sick, and will get others sick and stay sick longer.

To achieve better health outcomes, Americans must begin to see health as a holistic matter. Right now the American health care “house” has a foundation that is part marble, part rotting wood and part dirt. It has four walls that are a mixture of teak, balsa wood and bamboo, all of them in sorry shape. And finally, it has a gilded roof with millions of holes.

Sources:

Dr. Mercola''s Comments Dr. Mercola's Comments:

If you have a few minutes I highly suggest you read documentary filmmaker John de Graaf’s entire article, linked above. It brilliantly points out what is missing in all of the debates about health care reform for the United States, and that is a holistic approach.

Whether or not to provide universal health care or health insurance to every American is not the question that needs to be answered. What we should be asking is how to give Americans more time to spend relaxing, exercising, cooking healthy meals and sleeping. It would be wise to focus on getting all Americans access to healthy foods, instead of subsidizing agribusiness that produces mostly junk food.

And we should be analyzing why the U.S. has a health care system that is 40-60 percent more expensive than the health care system in any other industrial country, yet ranks only 45th in life expectancy and 42nd in rates of infant mortality.

What do the Outrageous Costs of U.S. Health Care Get You?

If you think health care is expensive now, wait a few years. By 2016, it’s expected that health care costs will double to more than $4 trillion!

Just about everyone, from businesses to individuals, is feeling the pinch already, and it’s no wonder when you consider these outrageous facts about health care costs from the National Coalition on Health Care http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml:

• In 2007, $2.3 trillion, or $7,600 per person, was spent on health care.

• Health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.

• Total health care spending represented 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), and is expected to increase to 20 percent by 2016.

• For comparison, health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France.

• Workers are now paying $1,400 more in premiums annually for family coverage than they did in 2000.

Perhaps you’d be able to justify this spending if you were receiving top-notch medical care. Well, the United States does have one of the best systems in the world for treating acute surgical emergencies.

But the system is an unmitigated failure at treating, and preventing, chronic illness. And conventional medicine clearly kills more people than it saves. Let me give you an idea of what the medical error and mortality rate of conventional medicine in the United States looks like:

• Some 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs that are properly prescribed and properly administered, and side effects kill as many as 198,815 people.

• The recorded error rate of ICU’s is like the post office losing more than 16,000 pieces of mail every hour of every day, or banks deducting 32,000 checks from the wrong bank account every hour, 24/7.

• The recorded medical errors and deaths equate to six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each day, 365 days a year.

• Since 2001, a recorded 490,000 people have died from properly prescribed drugs in the United States, while 2,996 people died on U.S. soil from terrorism, all in the 9/11 attacks; prescription drugs are therefore 16,400 percent more dangerous than terrorism. If deaths from over-the-counter drugs are also included, then drug consumption leaps to being 32,000 percent more dangerous than terrorism. And conventional medicine viewed as a whole is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism.

And what about chronic disease?

Many of the leading causes of death in the United States -- heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes -- are facilitated by physician ignorance of foundational concepts of nutritional physiology.

They are also triggered and made worse by things like stress, inactivity and exposure environmental toxins -- all factors that many working Americans, and particularly low-income Americans, find difficult to change.

Taking Control of Your Health

More government involvement doesn’t hold the answer to the health care crisis. What is needed is more personal involvement -- your personal involvement -- in the form of a commitment to your own health.

If you carefully follow some basic health principles -- simple things like exercising, eating whole foods, sleeping enough, getting sun exposure, and reducing stress in your life -- you will drastically reduce your need for conventional medical care.

You could also carefully analyze newer health insurance options such as HRAs and HSAs if you live in the United States. The basic concept here is to provide protection against medical catastrophes, but to have a high deductible to lower your costs. If you stay healthy, the premium savings would more than pay for the higher deductible -- IF you ever need it.

And that is really the bottom line.

The more you take responsibility for your own health -- in the form of nurturing your body to prevent disease -- the less you need to rely on the “disease care” that passes for health care in the United States in the first place.


Related Links:



Comment on This Article Community Comments (22)
 
 
Posted On Oct 09, 2008
What I find disheartening as is the fact that the presidential candidates stand up and proclaim... "If elected, I will make sure that everybody has health care!"  I'll pass, thanks. Your only hope to be truly healthy and well is to stay out of that system. This requires a level of financial stability in order to purchase goods and services that contribute to a well lifestyle. Health care should be taught as a personal responsibility at an early age. Because of 'big pharma' and insurance lobbies it is a monumental mountain to climb, but one worth continuing to pursue. This resource site is about the best weapon we have for factual, natural guidelines... for all of us "David's" fighting Goliath.

 
Dr. Ron
Novice User Novice User, Joined On 10/2008
Dr. Ron  
Replied

stoic
Apprentice User Apprentice User Joined On 3/2007
stoic  
 
Posted On Oct 09, 2008
When you find yourself disheartened every time one of those mouths open, you will have arrived...at a viable beginning.

As for the undeniable blessings of financial stability, those will be ingredients for tales told round campfires to wide-eyed children - along with descriptions, in the probable absence of actual,  roasted marshmallows - before the debacle concludes.....


KelleyEidem
Apprentice User Apprentice User Joined On 11/2007
KelleyEidem  
 
Posted On Oct 23, 2008

The best way to cut health care costs is to learn how to cure yourself. I've done it a thousand times...

My favorite example is how I cured myself of Stage 4 cancer. It cost me about $10 at the time, some ten years ago, with stuff you can buy in the grocery store. Today it would cost about $25.

If I'd sought treatment, after $100,000 of expense or more, I would have died. I cured myself in two weeks, instead.

The total US bill for cancer is $160 billion annually, not counting lost time from work. So we might be talking $300 to $400 billion.

I've put the recipe on a free hubpage.

A few others have tried my method. Here's what happened:

itsnotjustforsex.blogspot.com/.../she-said-my-knife-piercing-pain-is.html

This would probably help cure a lot of other things, too, which can save you a bundle.

The best to you.

Kelley Eidem

Together we can cure cancer -one person at a time!



curious7
Savvy User Savvy User Joined On 3/2007
curious7  
 
Posted On Oct 25, 2008

Dr. Ron:

Yes stay out of the system all together, with what they say about Doctors being the 3rd leading cause of death in America today, I personally think they should be moved to number 1.  We no longer teach basic health in our schools, and physial education is but a memory.  So we as parents must take over the local school boards, that is parents who have children in the system, and make health, and academic postive changes, and not leave this work to someone just looking for a career.


 
 
 
Posted On Oct 23, 2008

Ah - thanks for the opportunity to vent here.  Most people reading this "taking care your health" article do not depend on hospitalization insurance, health care, whatever you want to call it.

When I found out that $400 a month was being spent on health insurance for my husband and I (both in our late 40's), my jaw dropped.  Why are we paying for this?  It will never, ever benefit us, as we do not use doctors or take drugs.  "If you want drugs, go down to the street corner, get whatever you want, it'll be cheaper than $400 a month" I told my husband.

He piped back that if something ever happened, it would come in useful.  What can happen?  Get hit by a car?  Isn't that what auto insurance is for?  Have the sniffles?  Oh, please.  What awful disease can a doctor cure that a natural, healthy diet along with some supplements when needed can't?  No answer for that.

If we did go to the doctor, as he has, two or three times in the past five years, insurance didn't cover a dime (in order to get an hmo with a $30 co-payment we'd have to pay well over $1000 a month), and he wasn't treated for the kidney stone, or whatever it was.  Spent two or three minutes with a "doctor" who wrote out a scribble on a notebook, which he took to the pharmacy, total cost $3500.  The $400 a month premium didn't cover one lousy dime of that.

We are going to spent our extra $400 on better food and a healthier lifestyle - it's much more fun, satisfying, and delicious.


 
dempoolguy
Apprentice User Apprentice User, Joined On 3/2007
dempoolguy  
Replied

broobs
Novice User Novice User Joined On 10/2007
broobs  
 
Posted On Oct 23, 2008

I am in complete agreement with you, dempoolguy! I wouldn't go to a medical doctor even if I had cancer. I watched them slowly kill my dad. He was a healthy guy until he was told he had diabetes. They put him on pills. It wasn't soon after that he needed another pill, then another, then another. I feel his diabetes pills gave him his prostrate cancer, heart failure and host of other health issues he had. At one point he was on 18 perscription drugs that he took each day!!

When he went into respiratory arrest...ghee I wonder why....the doctor got this  bright idea that maybe he was on too many meds!!!  

They removed all meds from him and slowly put him back on them to see if any one was causing his problems. Over the course of a few days, they did some trial and error and figured he could "safely" live off 6 of them.

That bought him 6 mths then back he went to the ER with respiratory failure. He spent 1 week in the ICU ward. After that he we was put in a rehab center because he was bedridden too long and could no longer walk (he was 72 at the time). He was just too weak to even get himself to a commode.

Finally, he had enough and went home to die. He died 3 mths ago. Up to the very end of his life, he refused to go back the the hospital. I held his hand as he took his last breath.

After watching doctor after doctor "practice medicine" on my dear dad, I will never trust them with my dogs life, let alone my families.



curious7
Savvy User Savvy User Joined On 3/2007
curious7  
 
Posted On Oct 24, 2008

Dempoolguy:

Absolutely, basically what we do in these plans is pay for the few unhealthy, and it is tied down with conventionial medicine, and no medical choice whatever.  Their way or not at all.


 
 
 
Posted On Oct 23, 2008

Hi, I am from the UK.  From here it looks like America looks more and more divided between the 'have's and 'have nots'.  

The richest country in the world has some of the poorest people with who are illiterate and no health care. Don't you care about your fellow men? How can you not have a system for all people like the UK and Europe?  

Everyone is seen as a 'loser', 'geek', etc if you are not pretty or not rich.  Why?

I just don't understand. What happened to 'personality' and 'character'?

The attitude seems to reflect on health care too. There is none! - unless you can afford it. Insurance companies fleecing people and making a huge profit.  It is unthinkable that there is such a 'tight-fisted' system. No wonder the place is so divided - Rich and Poor.

Even the developing countries have better systems for their countries welfare in health care.


 
Kathy000000x
Novice User Novice User, Joined On 7/2008
Kathy000000x  
Replied

Julieanne
Apprentice User Apprentice User Joined On 6/2007
Julieanne  
 
Posted On Oct 25, 2008

Kathy, yes, even Cuba - not a wealthy country - has FREE health and dental care. Mind you, their docs aren't paid very much. It all comes down to a question of priorities. What do you consider most important?

I am so glad I live in Australia - if I had an accident or sudden need for hospitalisation,I would be taken care of at no cost. I am a pensioner, but this doesn't make any difference.



Jacobite
Novice User Novice User Joined On 1/2009
Jacobite  
 
Posted On Feb 19, 2009

Nice idear, but why do so many Brits come to France for treatment & surgery? The system in France is superb in every respect, espercially as in England old people are frequently considered not worth the medical effort, or NICE denies the appropriate drugs. French doctors seem to have some very strange idears, such as their task is to cure people, not rack up the cash for their next Mercedes. The nurses are incredibly hard working and kind, and the hospitals are very clean, which many English hospitals are not. And in most you can have a little glass of red wine with lunch.


 
 
 
Posted On Oct 07, 2008
I agree with the article that healthcare is really sickness care.  There is little to nothing done to PREVENT dis-ease.  I do not have health insurance. Health insurance will not cover most of  the costs that I have for my health.  It will not pay for my chiropractor, natural doctor, natural supplements, or massage therapist.  OK, it may pay for some chiropractor bills, but only if it is the one they recommend, and not the one I know is working for me.  I pay a lot for good supplmentation for me and my family.  They will not pay one dime for it.  I don't even get to take it off as an exemption at the end of the year!

I guess I am not willing to buy in to the trap of health insurance.  It becomes a viscious circle between the drug companies, insurance companies, doctors, and who knows who else!  I'll just keep working on getting healthier and healthier because at least in my circle, I am out of the trap and into getting and feeling better!

 
curlilox
Savvy User Savvy User, Joined On 8/2007
curlilox  
 
 
 
Posted On Oct 23, 2008

Hi! I am from Canada (Québec province, english is not my mother tongue, sorry for the errors).

Compared to Americans, we have huge taxes...and I don't mind paying them. Our health care system is not perfect, but everyone can be quite sure she or he will get the the treatment she or he needs. Of course I get mad to see someone who never cared of his heatlh having his artery deblocked at the expense of the system, knowing this operation would cost 50 000$ otherwise. But then, I think of one of my friends, 24 year old brilliant young man, never smoked, never drinked that much,  fighting against cancer for 5 years. The chemo treatments he received ( wich left him crippled and please don't tell me he searched for it or he should have tried something else) costed at least 150 000 Can$. Should his parents payfor it, we would have another family on the street.  Who put this amount of money in a just-in-case account in Canada? No one! And if we didn't have our health care system, would we put our extra money in an account just-in-case? Obviously not. Our system is far from perfection, there is some huge waiting lists in non-urgent surgery for exemple, but I prefer a governmental system than a private system run by insurance companies. the doors opened for privatisation, but we already don't have enough doctors and nurses, so it will make things worse for middle-class and poor families. The Canadian and Québécois  governments are doing an effort for education to good health, but it is still not suffcient. I choose have the luxury to gather information and make better decisions for my health, that's my responsability, but depriving people who didn't take this responsibility from the health care they need would be, in my opinion, a step towards dictatorship. I am paying taxes with a smile, and ride a bycicle until mega snow falls, not because I can't afford a car, but to keep the doctor away...until I get bumped by a %$##?%$ car. My responsibility is to be careful.


 
Val233rie D
Novice User Novice User, Joined On 1/2008
Val233rie D  
 
 
 
 
© Copyright 2009 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your site please click here. This content may be copied in full, with copyright, contact, creation and information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Dr. Mercola is required.
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using this product.