Prevention as a Model for Healthcare Reform
If you are reading this, you may have already embraced the concept of prevention as a model for healthcare reform since you find yourself on an Integrative Medicine website - prevention being the wholemark theory behind Integrative Medicine.
You are not alone. More than 40 billion dollars are spent out of pocket in this country by those seeking to prevent an illness or abort its progression through complementary care. At least half of all people between the ages of 35 and 55 have used at least one complementary service this year alone. This is just a small portion of the 2.5 trillion dollars that the nation spends each year on healthcare-nearly one fifth of the American economy. It is cleary a time for change and fast.
Hospitals, the American Medical Association, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical industries and our congressional leaders must all step up to the challenge and consider prevention as the necessary antidote for our healthcare ills. Why would prevention serve to be of such benefit? Simply put prevention is one step ahead of an illness both acute and chronic and can save enormous sums of money. Haven’t the insurance companies learned that they will pay much more for knee surgery and months of rehabilitation than they would for a series of effective acupuncture treatments? Haven’t they heard of the scientific benefits of such treatments?
My experience as an Emergeny Physician and Regional Administrator allows me to observe firsthand what can happen to a a person who has not lived a life with preventional care. It is mind boggling to find an emergency room visitor of young to middle age come in with an acute cardiac condition which will now force the healthcare system to spend thousands and thousands of dollars both acutely and long term to help control a disease that may have been prevented all together by such simple choices as eating habits, exercise and smoking cessation. We all need to become stewards of change. Write to your congressional leaders and ask them to be on the side of prevention as we develop our nation’s healthcare reform.
