Health Care Goblins We Ignore
By D. S. Mitchell
Grassroots Platform
Over the last couple of days Calamity has focused on Medicare-For-All. But there is more to the story of health care in America. Www.CalamityPolitics.com gives me a grassroots platform to discuss health care. But, it does not give me the right to manipulate facts or lie about the issues. With that said, I am sharing opinions developed through my years of ground level experience in health care, otherwise known as trench warfare.
Street Level Experience
I am a baccalaureate prepared RN, and have worked nearly four decades in major hospitals in Oregon, Washington, California and Nevada. On the battlefield I have formed many opinions about the scope of care we give our patients and how to deliver better client results. I’m not only experienced, but I am passionate about health care and how to improve it. Mine is a pragmatic common sense small world approach to these issues. I am not a policy maker. I do not have a doctorate in nursing or public policy. It is important to leave policy creation to the experts. My comments and opinions come from a community view.
To Medicate
My two primary areas of specialty are Crisis Psychiatry and Cardiac Intensive Care. Whether the issues are mental, behavioral, or cardiac emergency, many of the issues facing the caregiver, and the client are the same. Despite the obvious differences in the front line needs of the clients. Both of these populations are often the sickest in the hospital. My thinking changed over time. For the first 25 years of my practice when I admitted a patient into the hospital who had a suitcase of medications, I believed they needed all those prescribed pharmaceuticals because they were so sick. As an old nurse, my thinking transformed. The patient is sick because they are taking medications instead of exercising and eating right. In other words they are not taking care of themselves.
Big Pharma
I can hear the protests from the audience now. I say, just read the labels, these medications are toxic and poisonous. Many have a list of side effects that make the original reason for the prescription seem inconsequential. Truthfully, every pill has the potential to cause devastating side effects. Some known and some unknown. When a person complains to his doctor that he is uncomfortable due to the side effects of the medication he is taking, his doctor writes him another prescription to help deal with the side effects. He has pain so his doctor writes him a prescription for an analgesic. Next he complains of constipation, so he gets a prescription. You can see where this is headed, right?
Brainwashing For Profit
Constant television marketing has convinced many folks that there is a pill to fix anything and everything. Unfortunately, many Americans are convinced there is a pill for everything. Health care policy makers need to take this issue seriously. Billions of dollars are spent by pharmaceutical companies to sell their products whether they are needed or not; and that is a problem.
Poor Life Style Choices
Lifestyle diseases kill more people than communicable diseases.
The top five killers are:
1.) Diabetes
2.) Cardiovascular disease (High Blood Pressure, Heart Attack, High Cholesterol)
3.) Stroke
4.) Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
5.) and some forms of cancer.
Chronic Disease
More than 70% of deaths in the United States are attributable to one of the above listed diseases. 75% of the U.S. Health Care dollar is spent on the same listed diseases. These numbers do not reflect the personal and economic burden of chronic illness, lost work days, low productivity, pain, disability and poor quality of life that they cause.
1.) Non-Modifiable: unchangeable circumstances, such as age, gender, race, genetics.
2.) Modifiable: changeable circumstances, such as life style choices. People can change their behavior and improve their health. Most particularly, cigarette smoking, poor diet, inactivity, alcohol abuse or overuse, and chronic stress. Most people understand the link between lifestyle choices and chronic illness are undeniable. Quite simply, accepting and understanding the dangers of unhealthy behaviors does not necessarily change human behavior.
Denial Does Not Help
“I’m going to die from something,” is the most common response people make when confronted with their bad habits. There seems to be no regard for the overall effects of that attitude on self, family, community or country.
Common Predictors
Predictors of chronic illness: smoking, processed foods, fast foods, starchy carbs, bread & pasta, sugar drinks, excess alcohol, overeating, excessive salt use, sugar, high fat diets, and lack of exercise. These behaviors will lead to obesity. Obesity increases risks, particularly of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Smoking Is Bad
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of chronic illness and death in the U.S. It is in fact, responsible for 1 in 5 deaths. Statistics show that 10 times as many Americans have died prematurely from cigarette smoking than have died in all American wars. Smoking hardens arteries and causes the heart to work harder. Emphysema and COPD are directly related to smoking. Smoking causes 80% of all COPD deaths and 90% of lung cancer deaths. Additionally, smoking is a major cause of throat, bladder cancer, voice box, liver, pancreas, stomach, kidney and colorectal cancers.
Take Steps
America be your own best physician:
1.) Stop smoking
2.) Eat a plant-based diet
3.) Exercise at least 7 hours per week
4.) Reduce stress
5.) Practice good dental health
6.) Have fun
The really big lie. A free market solution
Former CIGNA Senior VP turned whistle-blower, Wendall Potter called it “general gullibility and blind adherence to ideology.” The American public has been bamboozled “by the self-serving propaganda from health care insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and every other part of the medical industrial complex,” he told Congress in 2011.
Other developed countries decided:
1.) health care is a right AND as such, is different than typical free market arenas. 2.) when the ‘invisible hand’ of Adam Smith’s free market philosophy controls a nation’s health care system the result is higher cost and sicker citizens.
Ditch Ideology
In 2011, Jason Adkins commented in a Catholic Spirit article, “slavish adherence to ideology in politics can and does inflict harm to the very people public officials claim to serve.”
Failure Of Competition
One basic element rarely discussed is failure of competition. The hospital industry is highly concentrated in areas with higher populations while under serving the rural populations . Often rural hospitals left to fail and close. “Health care services don’t really compete with one another as equal goods. “ My doctor’s care is different from the care provided by my neighbor’s physician. My medications are different from my neighbors. The neighbor’s response to care is different from my response. These variables make sure that no case is the same. Thus, no “equal goods,” can apply.
“Functioning Perfectly”
Mark Sokr in 2011 said, “I think the health care market is functioning perfectly. The problem is that the market is producing profits, NOT health.” Patients most likely would call this failure. However, for all facets of the health care industry, profits are spectacularly high. So it can be claimed that the market is a success and doing what it is intended to do, make money. For patients to expect better health care results would be unrealistic if using the “equal goods” model.
Two Separate And Divergent
A very obvious dilemma exposes itself. Two separate and divergent end desires. The free market wants profit. The citizenry wants good, inexpensive health care. The ideology of profit and successful health care delivery do not coincide. Since the primary goal of the free market is profit, “Any diversion from this goal is inefficient and against the interests of the holders of capital,” Sokr concluded.
Retool Your Health Care Thinking
To slay the goblins in our health care closet it seems to me that we need to drop the ideology and look at the facts.
1.) Prevention must become the goal. We can cut the cost of health care by billions of dollars.
2.) Personal responsibility and self advocacy must become the center of each individual’s health care and greatest well-being.
3.) MD’s and patients must reject Big Pharma brainwashing. Give up the idea that a pill will fix everything. It is the doctor’s obligation to direct their patients to a healthy lifestyle and stop handing out a pill for every complaint.
4.) Accept the proven fact that “free market” systems are inappropriate for health care and will always fail.
5.) A single payer system delivers the best and least expensive care.
