My Cure for Health Care

I don't pretend to have an answer for everything, but here's my take on Health Care. Below are a few points I would like to make:

(1) Can Government do it better? This is one area I might have some experience with. I worked for the government for almost 28 years and it frightens me to think about Government taking over health care. I think we all are aware of the U.S. Postal Service and the debt they create every year. Now the postal service has discussed cutting workers and stopping the delivery of mail on Saturday. So, instead of solving the problem they take away services. Doesn't make sense to me, but maybe I'm from the planet Mars or from an alternate universe. Wouldn't it be scary if the government applies the same logic to health care. Okay, we will eliminate doctors and nurses and will close office on the weekends. Are you happy now?

(2) Stop the lawsuits. Doctors have been leaving the profession in droves because of lawsuits. Sadly, doctors are extremely overworked. When a doctor sees 40-50 patients a day and works 120 hours a week what do you expect? Also, these lawsuits increase the cost of health care dramatically.

(3) Pharmaceutical Industry: In my opinion the lobbyists of the pharmaceutical industry are the biggest problem. Instead of health care being focused on the needs of the patient, it is focused on making money--another case of greed destroying a system (much like what happened to our economy). These lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year, buying our congressman/woman's votes. With this power, they block or prevent cures if these cures do not profit their industry. For more on the pharmaceutical industry see the link below. The report is old, but still gets the point across.

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=723

(4) Take responsibility for ourselves: We, the american people, have to take responsibility for ourselves. There's some simple steps we can take to make our life better:

a. Eat better. I used to eat out at the fast food establishments daily. Coupled with the other bad things I was doing, it really brought my health down.

b. A pill for everything: People have to get weaned off the idea that they can do anything bad because they think they can just take a pill to get cured. Often if we take the time to be honest with ourselve and get to the root cause of our problem then we don't need to take a pill or if so only for a short while. Also, there is a price to pay for drugs--the side effects and the toxins that are placed in our bodies.

c. Relax: We need to learn how to relax. When I lived in Europe I observed the Europeans know how to relax. Also, they work shorter work weeks. In American's we forget what the word relax means. We're pushed on the job to work harder and longer hours to make more money for the company. In the meantime, the stress takes a toll on our health, not to mention the family problems it creates. My job was one of the most stressful jobs in the Air Force. We were paid thousands of dollars just to stay on the job. There was lots of stress, odd hours, bad food, etc. Every holiday period, I used to look around before I leave work and would think, "I wonder who will kill themselves this year." I would try to guess and I was always wrong. It always seemed to happen to the people who you thought "had it together." Later, I would think, "Oh my God! He blew his brains out on the wall. What will his children think if they every find out?"

c. Get more sleep. No need to talk about this. We should all be aware that lack of sleep is associated with higher heart attack and cancer rates not not mention a number of other things.

d. Treat the whole person. We need to have enough doctors so they have the time to get to the root causes of the patient's problems. With the lack of doctors, they barely have enough time to say hi and write a prescription. They need to have the time to ask the patient what may have led to the problem.

e. Alternative Cures: We need to consider incorporating alternative cures in Health Care.

FINAL COMMENT:

Only when we have eliminated greed from the system and instead place the patient's health as a priority, can we improve our Health Care system. Trust me, placing government in control isn't the answer. When I worked in the government, it seemed whenever a mistake was make, the government created more training programs and regulations. Once created, these rules and regulations never seemed to go away, they just continued to grow. In the meantime, we have to have more people and take more time and money to get anything done. There were so many rules (many the size of phonebooks) that we couldn't follow if we wanted to. Then there were the yearly or semi-annual inspections. It was a nightmare. I hope you see where I'm leading. Our health care is bad enough as it is, adding government to the problem will create a nightmare. That I can assure you.

If you wish to learn more, I highly recommend the following link:

http://www.areturntohealing.com/

Cheers

Paul