Healthcare vs illness industry

This thoughtful piece by Maury Silverman was published last week in American Free Press:

When will the politicians understand what a real healthcare system is?

With the presidential campaign going full speed, "healthcare" is an issue. Some of the leading candidates are arguing over who proposes a plan to insure more people or "universal coverage".

The problem with "healthcare" is that what is being discussed nationally is not about real HEALTHCARE. It is about the medical care delivery system, and how to finance it; how to cope with the vast inflationary cycle in the system; and how to 'insure' the uninsured.

The real dilemma is that the cost of medical care, or sick care insurance is high enough to make the healthiest person sick.

Educating and motivating people to adopt healthy lifestyles, and only participate in non-toxic therapies, can insure better health, than by having some type of insurance plan.

Enhancing citizen choice of the healthcare practitioner is important. The educated consumer has access to digital information online to facilitate treatment decision making in partnership with their medical and healthcare provider.

Preventive medicine is not just early diagnosis of serious pathology, but is inclusion of healthcare modalities such as nutrition that medical schools do not teach, or include in training.


What can we do about this?

The answer clearly is to create a true healthcare system.

The medical care delivery system has not been based on a definition of what health is, what creates it, and what can restore it when it is sick.

Medical care is based on the basic medical sciences of biochemistry and physiology. And too often all that is put at risk with pharmacology. The very strength of medical care is diagnostics in the age of technology.

Look at two Institute of Medicine studies & recommendations from August & September 2006; on ;Preventing Medication Errors; and The Future of Drug Safety.

The FDA amendments passing congress into law last year on post-market surveillance of pharmaceutical drugs, remain to be implemented, and have a positive effect upon the dangers of POLYPHARMACY. People are just on too many drugs.

A True healthcare system would implement, integrate, and bring to the center of public policy what would balance the system with modalities that already work well for the educated consumer.

This includes nutrition, healthier food, such as organics; and bodywork modalities that bring posture into balance, or structural integration, such as osteopathy, chiropractic, and the soft tissue therapies such as message, and myofascial
release, among many others.

A good trend would result by reading & implementing the recommendations of the President's Commission on Complementary & Alternative Medicine from the 1990's. It speaks to integrating healthcare into medical care.

The only true healthcare bill passed in the Clinton Administration was the DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act. It is now being fully implemented since passage in 1994. DSHEA has stimulated more research, understanding, and usage
of nutrients to build and rebuild health, for the masses.

Another very important matter for reform: is the medical malpractice litigation
system. The fear of lawsuits by medical practioners distorts the system, runs up the costs, of defensive medical practice; and quite simply & truthfully makes honest people dishonest. It is time to stop subsidizing the insurance industry with medical malpractice premiums, that do not predominately go toward helping people heal from medical mistakes, practices that may have been done better, and not grossly negligent.

The 1973 Nixon HEW Commission on Malpractice stated in its summary of alternatives to litigation that: "There is no rule of law or precedent of public policy that precludes the use of arbitration in a medical-legal interface".

It is past time to recreate the malpractice litigation system that does not benefit consumers and patients.

"Standards of Practice" ought be determined by evidence-based medicine & healthcare; not by case law, and fear, distrust, hatred, and conflict of doctors & lawyers.

Maury Silverman