A New Paradigm of Health Care
Five congressional committees are working on healthcare reform, President Obama is pushing hard for completion by August break. One bill cleared committee on Thursday along strict party lines. But support for change does not indicate support for a single vision of change. One reason for dissent on the hill come from the House Ways and Means Committee, which says there is no way healthcare reform as they envision it will save money.
The conundrum on The Hill is how to be sure every American citizen is covered by health insurance. This addresses the people who don’t have insurance due to cost, employers who can’t afford to offer it due to cost, people who must choose to pay rent rather than health care.
The price of health care stems from the cost and overuse of high tech procedures, drug costs, high hospital and specialist’s fees.
Here in Missoula, Montana, the cry is heard that there are not enough primary care physicians anymore because physicians prefer to specialize. Primary care doctors are not making enough money to entice new physicians to become one or to stay in practice.
I have a solution. It requires sensibility and common sense however. Those come at no financial cost however so I will proceed. For the last 20 years I have been involved in medicine thinking it would be nice to be a bridge between naturopathic and allopathic medicine. Now I think more radically. Let naturopathic medicine be the primary medical model and we will refer to the specialists as necessary. Yes, you guessed it, the cost of medicine will go way down.
The allopathic model of medicine manages chronic disease, does heroic interventions and life-extending procedures such as liver transplants, and patches up traumatic injuries. The technological advances are great, the knowledge and skill in sewing limbs back on fabulous, the scanning machines to find hidden tumors are wonderfully helpful too.
The worst thing that has happened is the dependency on pharmaceutical drugs for every ailment.
The doctor has become a prescriptionist. The drugs most often control one symptom and have a negative effect or two elsewhere, and, they seldom actually correct the underlying reason for the problem in the first place. So, we have become a nation full of people taking medications and still not getting well. Hello! Is this what you call success? Why do we want to keep going like this?
For those of you who don’t, and these are the people who seek out chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopathic physicians, massage therapists, and midwives, you intuit that you can cure your ailments and not be stuck on a medication. You are who we as naturopathic physicians see in our office. It is my joy and pleasure to reveal how disease came about, and how we can clean up, fortify, and support the normal physiological functions of your body. We can cure infections, chronic disease, high blood pressure, depression and other ailments by using specific herbs, specific nutrients, specific homeopathic medicines. Patients don’t have to take synthetic medication and they feel better, not just maintained. All in all, you can feel better and spend less money than you would with allopathic care, and yet the system does not support this, it supports the medical/pharmaceutical/insurance triad. These are the powerful interests that are influencing the decision makers.
Common sense? Demand an expansion of natural medicine as the mainstay of medicine. Combined with the great emergency medicine and the medical support for the deeply ailing folks, we could be a prouder, healthier nation.
Naturopathic doctors are licensed primary care providers in Montana, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Alaska. They are licensed in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
There will be more states licensed as the legislation is passed. The licensing process assures that you have trained physicians not someone who earned a certificate in a correspondence school.
Ask for what you want, not a re-arrangement of dollars spent on health care. You want health care that improves your health.
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