Health Care v. Sick Care

Health Care v. Sick Care

This morning, when my wife and me were talking about "the state of things" as we sometimes do, we came to the subject of health care.  Now you should understand that she works in health care so she has some degree of aptitude on the subject.

"If they really cared about us as the hospital, there would be a gym there."

And that really grabbed me.  Because, when you think about it, it's emblematic of the entire health care debate.  In the vaguest of terms, you have business represented.  And on the other hand, you have everyone else.  And that's how the dialogue is set up.  Business represents the supply side.  The people are the greedy consumers demanding things that they can't pay for.

The ugly side of this is that business doesn't care about healthy and sick people.  Business is only going to care about revenue - forever.  Which is, of course, why capitalism is so successful in the US, because we rarely get in the way of something that makes a lot of money.

And money is the dominant player in health care by far.  You can argue semantics over how the health care business operates and the role the government has in making decisions for patients (and I would be interested in your perspective).  What you cannot argue is how badly "sick care" really has declined, and how unhealthy we are as a nation.

Fact is, when we were "healthier" (read thinner), we ate differently and exercised.  But the majority of us no longer live on farms and work ten-hour days.  So we need to be honest with ourselves and at least go back to the ethic of the Kennedy era - that exercise and sports are valuable endeavors - that wellness was a noble pursuit.  And if wellness means promoting exercise, then what's wrong with that?

The problem is that when you consider wellness programs, you are immediately faced with the added expense.  We are told that we ask for too much.  I think it would be an interesting study to see what lawmakers were opposed to increased health care spending.  It would be even more telling to figure out the exact motives.  I propose that it would be one hell of a loss to health care operations - from insurers to hospitals - if you were to keep patients from participating in the industry.  You call selling something for less than what it costs a "loss leader" - a sales curve that could be potentially profitable sometime in the future.  But what do you call the trend where people dramatically decrease their consumption of patent medicines, and dramatically decrease their trips to the hospital?  Why, it would be a bust for an entire industry, a real blight on the business.

It is a surprising lack of creative thinking that has led us into this mess.  And it will take an impressive turn of events to take us out of it.  Frankly, I would argue that we need to start thinking of people as a whole, instead of the sum of their parts.  Why aren't depression, cancer, and heart disease treated with a general focus, early in life?  Why aren't we discusssing these maladies with the same interest we give the Newtown massacre?  Why don't we teach our young people the importance of sleep, water, and nutrition?

I recently read an article about the state of medicine in the UK.  What struck me was that nearly 1 in 4 doctors there are now prescribing exercise (yes, "go outside and walk!") as a method to treat depression.  You can imagine, maybe, the wave in lobbyist traffic to the White House, that such a prescription trend would cause.  The calls of "socialist" would ring for miles around the capital.  Would it be socialist to reject the very thing that American taxpayers work so hard for?  I don't think so, but what we're doing now makes no sense either.