Like most people, I was encouraged and energized by President Obama’s stirring speech to Congress last week. With rare candor, he told the truth about the three C’s of reform: costs, coverage, and character. The last C was the most emotionally charged. Staring lawmakers and citizens in the eye, the President essentially asked, "Is America a society that squanders $900 billion on a dishonest war but refuses to spend the same amount to give its citizens affordable health care?" Because of the massive counterefforts by lobbyists and the resistance of the right wing, we’re holding our breaths on the answer to that question.
But let’s say the light prevails and the Democrats deliver a bill that gives insurance access to millions of previously uninsured Americans. As great as that victory would be, health care won’t be reformed. Isolated voices like Andrew Weil (writing at the Huffington Post and in his book,Why Our Health Matters, and Dean Ornish (writing as the medical editor at huffingtonpost.com and in his book,The Spectrum), and former Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano are telling us why.
Here are the basic points that aren’t being addressed:
1. Prevention, the key to future health, isn’t being followed enough. That’s why Americans are getting more obese and sedentary every year. That’s why sugary drinks are now the single largest source of calories in the average diet. Alcohol and tobacco still account for 35% of all medical expenditures. Leading causes of bad health — obesity, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes — could be rolled back by sensible prevention guidelines that people simply aren’t following.
2. Supply and demand for doctor care is upside down. Patients aren’t demanding the bulk of the $700 billion in unnecessary tests and procedures performed every year in this country. Doctors are creating the demand to cover their backs and increase their income. Even conscientious doctors who put the patient first are caught in lockstep habits, calling for unnecessary tests because that’s what doctors do in this country.
3. Without a public option, there’s no real incentive for insurance companies to lower their costs. The free market isn’t free when the consumer is presented with noncompetitive insurance plans that basically aim at corporate profit and when Wall Street dictates how corporations must be run in order to survive.
4. To borrow a phrase from Secretary Califano, we’ve become a "sick-care system" that puts all its efforts in developing newer drugs and offering more surgery once a person is ill. Doctors are not trained to keep people healthy. They are also strongly tempted to perform needless procedures that do not extend life span, such as hysterectomies, lower back surgery, heart bypass, and balloon angioplasty.
5. We are addicted to the sick-care system, and no money is being allocated in any of the reform bills in Congress to breaking this addiction. Massive public education was successful, over a long period of time, in getting people to quit smoking. Now we need the same massive public education to get them to adopt prevention. Will doctors, insurance companies, and big pharma do the job for us? Well, did big tobacco do the job of ending smoking? Without government action, the private sector will push drugs and surgery because prevention doesn’t show up as profit on their bottom line.
I regret having to walk in the shadow this way. President Obama brought a good deal of light to the whole muddled issue of health-care reform. He spoke truth and balanced it with political realism. He chastised the political reactionaries who want to kill reform by using lies, fear, and misinformation. We’re better off for having heard the speech. But costs won’t go down and Americans won’t be healthier until the five points listed above are dealt with. Right now, health-care reform has been couched in terms of economics first and morality second, with little thought to what should really come first: turning sickness into wellness.
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle
What is it that makes the whole 'health care' system so resistant to the concept of wellness? Is it fear of the unknown? Wellness is not part of the training or medical thinking which increasingly focuses on narrower and narrower specialities. Is it fear that they will become ultimately redundant? Is it too hard for many doctors to let go of the certainty that they can control and fix disease? Is it the power of the pharmaceutical companies?
In the 1970s I watched Great Britain move into a mindset of dependency – of someone else being responsible, of it being someone else's job to make you well, usually with drugs and aggressive surgery. Today, there are many people who are prepared to take responsibility for their wellbeing and as well as having to stand against the prevailing ethos that 'doctor knows best' it is also expensive to seek help outside the system and at the same time continue to subsidise a system they take little part in.
However most are happy to do this – from a conviction that it is a moral imperative that our fellows are allowed the opportunity for health care – even when we feel the system to be misguided. But as costs spiral and even more virtuoso techniques eat into the hospital budgets and more fear is created with so called preventative tests we realise that reforms are needed.
Thank you Deepak for speaking out and highlighting the truth that until a fundamental shift is made in all our thinking, we will continue to be locked into a spiral of vast expenditure coupled with failure to the most vulnerable of our citizens – the sick.
xx Susan
Quite right, Susan. Something has got to give.
My view is that persons must be treated as whole persons before they can realise their wholeness. Simple statement but who can grasp it? The whole is infinitely more than the sum of the parts and yet the parts are kept parted! Ill-ness is actually a quest for well-ness. a deep pool rising up from within each of us. We are actually responsible for each other's well-being, (think stress, even unto a mother's womb.) Our Wholeness is the big picture, not the 10 minute doctor's appointment. It's the ongoing Love of and to our neighbours and covers every aspect of our being and belonging…….or so I keep telling myself!!
Love,
ed
Very good responses Susan and Ed,
Dr. Chopra remains in the shadow because he chooses to do so. He knows as well as any of us that corporate medicine has a stranglehold on health. That this corporate monopoly has been withholding simple and inexpensive cures from the world for most of the previous one hundred years. That healers have been sent to prison for practicing medicine without a license. But he chooses to remain silent about it – in hopes the President will say, enough? I don't believe Dr. Chopra is prepared to stand up and show the influence corporate medicine has on government. We will just leave it at corporate insurance. Why?
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Love and Blessings X 10,
Ed
We are not addicted to the sick care system. Alternatives are regulated into non competitive positions. A drug company can advertise health benefits for its harmful products, including off label benefits for which it has not received official approval, as though such was any measure of usefulness to begin with. But a nutritional supplement company cannot advertise proven health benefits for its products without official approval. Whose doing is this? Corporate medicine, which will not even exist in another ten years due to greed and avarice. Then no one will have to pay for it. Corporate agriculture and food processing are also co conspirators with corporate government and medicine, removing nutritional value from everything they grow or process and adding things which cause obesity and decrease immune function. Go ahead and say there is no such thing as conspiracy and it is only coincidence that all these corporate industries profit from each other's practices, not least of all banking and finance, the kingpin of global corporate power. Notice too how corporate oil benefits from corporate agriculture as does corporate chemistry such as Monsanto who intends to control the world's food supply. Right now, there are no more jobs in the U.S. than in 2001, except in government, which has grown by 6% and government employees now enjoy pay and benefit packages which dwarf those of their non government counterparts, not counting retirement benefits which are and always have been substantial. Government is now the number one growth industry in the United States and it contributes nothing to GDP or security, be it economic or military. It just makes rules for you and I to live by, day after day after day. So many that no citizen living is not likely violating some law for which s/he can be fined, imprisoned or both. But then freedom is not now an issue, nor is it likely to be in the Great Big Brother future that has been planned for us. Ooops, surely I have said too much.
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Love and Blessings X 10,
Ed
I completely agree with Dr. Chopra. Now what? Everyone is so focused on the problem, there are few people who are willing to look at the solutions. Here is a brainstorm I have done on it. Please realize some of these solutions are silly and unworkable, but that is the nature of brainstormming.
We, all of us out here, are the consummers. Lets boycotte insurence companies. Hay, most of us are paying out of pocket for the little stuff as it is.
Health insurence is a middle man. What if people just paid cash for the little stuff?
Go to the school boards and demand that every public school teach a unit in health and nutrition every year. Also, demand the reinstatement of Physical Education classes, not sports classes, but real education about physical health that include active learning.
Buy local and cook.
Organize a community garden.
Patronize an alternative health provider of your choice.
Drink water. Let Coke sell to people who live in countries with health care.
Keep pushing for a REAL public option.
Make all the Health Insurence companies use the same form and require that any 6th grader can read and understand it.
Make the insurence companies pay us as long as we stay healthy.
Get a tax break from the government if we stay healthy.
Turn it around, as long as a person is heathy, he or she will pay a fee to the doctor. When a person gets sick, they stop paying until they are brought into health again.
Make a course in restorative and reorganizational healing a manditory class to graduate from high school.
These are just a few SWAGs to get us started. If change is going to happen, we have to IMAGINE it first.
Collect kindnesses, trust your instincts, learn happiness and then spread it all over everyone you know.
Love,
Mariahn
Mariahn,
Wonderful ideas and I agree that these are the types of programs, community organizations and educational measures that we must begin to implement into our way of life. We give our government far too much power over issues that we are able to control in our own lives, families and communities. You can only change the world one step, one person at a time. I believe that our President, with the resources and and governmental entitities/strategies that were implemented long before he took office, is giving the general public a slow dose of the paradigm shift that some of us may have already experienced.
We need to understand that the "change" we seek is not an event; it is a journey. As we continue to rise in conciousness and evolve as a society, we will begin to see the fruits of our labor. If not nationally at first, each of us are responsible for raising awareness locally…..in our neighborhoods, communities, cities and districts. The passivity of our culture is a thorn in our side that we must remove to join in the movement of conciousness, awareness, activism and change.
Our government is in need of as much "reform" as our Healthcare system. We are naive to believe that we can lay all of our burdens upon our government and take no responsibility in having our dreams realized.
If our President took the time eradicate all of the injustices, conspiracies, misinformation and "the good ole boy system", this would mean that the elderly, the poor, "pre-existing conditioned" and even the so-called healthy citizens in this country would have to wait that much longer to have the right to a basic healthcare option at the least depending on their circumstances. Do we have the time to produce an instant "reform?" I'm not convinced we do, but we can be inspired by the fact that our government has finally made a genuine effort to move in a brighter direction.
Will we?
"Turning myself inside out in pursuit of Divinity"
I live in NV and emailed my representatives (including Harry Reid) regarding this issue this morning. I would feel better if they would take this in baby-steps. I don't trust our govt to handle health care. Look how they've botched up the welfare system, SSI and Medicare.
But I also don't believe in complaining about anything without providing suggestions and solutions for the problem. My suggestions for the first phase is to provide a Prevention Plan to everyone in the country. This would include routine dental, vision & physical exams. Health concerns discovered should be counseled for optimum health. After that, it is up to the individual to choose how they live.
Ironically, if our govt regulated the food & drug industry better we wouldn't have many of the health issues that exist. If the govt argues it can't interfere in the free-market world . . . well they've already lost any leg to stand on after bailing out the auto and bank industries. And just like a free-market exists, so do people's right to choose how they live their lives. Even if it includes an unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle leading to death.
The other irony of this situation, is that the President just gave a speech to school children about working hard to get a good education. The purpose being so they can get good jobs and be productive members of society. Well, one of the rewards of doing this is finding employment that provides good benefits like health insurance. A bit of a contradiction here.
Yes, we need health care reform! The govt should focus on providing a Prevention Plan and regulate the insurance companies. Whether it is the govt, the health care industry or individuals . . . you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.
Heather Mehudar
"There are no accidents, coincidences or mistakes."
Dr. David Robinson
Dr. Chopra's article title speaks volumes in a very subtle way. Health Care is first and foremost a SELF responsibility. For decades a vast majority have lead lives of apathy about their unhealthy lifestyles, with an attitude that health care (doctors, et. al.) would "fix" them when they became ill.
The primary "reform" that is necessary is the reform of lifestyles and lifestyle priorities, and that can only be done by the individual, not Congress or the government.
"There are no accidents, coincidences or mistakes."
Dear Heather, I presume from the above and agree with, that on some level each of us has ultimate choice. In case of 'destruction,' it infers that also on some deeper level we have mutual covenants, albeit ongoing and open to be renegotiated.
It seems to me we are driven by an infinite potential. The choice is for us to re-stablish our awareness of illness, both individually and collectively, as being our chosen manifestation of that potential. We must be healed BY it, not of it!
There is most definitely a potential for wellness, demonstrated in the miraculous healing, (ha, remission!) Freedom of choice is of the essence, therefore I am not able to force my inferred awareness upon another. Let me just say, the only truely effective Health Centre rests within the heart of my 'already Whole' self and of all others, too.
I'm working on the 'sunshine effect' of that, right now. No need to wear shades!!
Love,
ed
anarchist
That was soo excellent, Dr. Chopra! By the way ; This came out on google news today:
ABC NewsHeart Device Might be Useless for Women
ABC News – Pegge Peck – ?1 hour ago?
A tiny device–albeit very expensive device– that can send a life- saving shock to the heart may have been implanted unnecessarily into "hundreds of thousands of women," according to a study published Monday.
Implantable defibrillators Not Effective in Female Heart Patients dBTechno
Defibrillators may not save women, study finds Reuters
U.S. News & World Report – New York Times – WebMD – Bloomberg
all 60 news articles
To me, the issue at hand is one we've gift-wrapped to ourselves. We've abdicated our responsibility for own health, believing that modern medicine has all the answers and will cure all ills. Add to this the notion that no one should suffer, and you have and understanding of why we seek such panaceas from without.
From addictions to compulsions, we have been in transition from being responsible persons to shadows seeking to hide from reality. Pain is a reality. Suffering is a choice. How we chose to deal with the pain makes all the difference in the world. But I will add that for many, the choice has been taken away because they were never taught how to effectively mitigate suffering. As children or as infants, we never learned to care for ourselves. Generation after generation has been indoctinated into the notion that no child should ever cry. Utter rubbish!! Infants and children must learn to cope with life and all its coincidental pain, or face a life of endless suffering, seeking solace in a bottle of booze, drugs, food, sex, etc. This does not mean that I advocate withdrawing our love from our chilrden. Love is what teaches our children to be self-sufficient and whole, and able to give instead of being in a constant state of need, in endless suffering.
Whatever reform we may be seeking, let the end result in less suffering because we are better equipped to deal with the pain. Medicine will always be there to help correct the mechanical malfunctions of the body, but modern medicine has no real answers for the pervasive behavioral and psychological issues at the root of our malaise.
Deepak writes time and again about the illnesses brought about by imbalances, and he is not alone in that theory. I think we've yet to realize just how interrelated our physical and mental well-being truly is. Understand this relationship at every level and see how vibrant life can be.
Hello Deepak
We are a society addicted to "sick care," and too many people believe in "the pill" as the necessary healer simply because they have not been properly introduced to the bodies they live in, and how the body reacts and responds to the nutrients or lack of we feed it. Folks are also very unaware of how the environment they live in affects their bodies even though today they are more aware than ever before it is still a very small percentage.
In this Nation medicine is a busines before it is a healing entity. Drugs rule, legal and illegal, this is not going to change with a health care reform bill.
We need a public option and if there isn't one things will only get worse as far as the health insurance industry is concerned.
We should have a health prevention industry that is for profit but we should not have a health insurance industry that is for profit, period. Health insurance is a need for every American, a need, not a luxury, whether I have health insurance and you don't, I will end up paying for your care anyway through higher health insurance premiums just as we are doing now. I simply cannot afford health insurance premiums that rise every year while my paycheck stays the same every year.
Our "sick care system" will take years to turn around and into a "health care system." Health care reform cannot wait for that to happen but that does not mean it cannot be the ultimate goal of reform.
It has taken years upon years to bring out "sick care system" to it's fruitation as seen and experienced today with many factors playing a role in it's development, slowly we are seeing changes being made in people's awareness and that is because people are demanding change and I think this will only continue, but now we need a health care reform bill that will help all Americans who are in dire need of affordable health insurance.
I want to add my perspective. In regards to the "unneccesary" procedures (hysterectomies, CABC, Total Knee/Hip replacements, low back/spinal fusions I could go on and on and on). It seems to, and I work in a "rehab" facililty were these orto and cardiac patients go for 2-12 weeks. The patients given these procedures many (9 out of 10) times needed them because of lack of prevention(point #1). Patients who have lived a lifetime of unhealthy eating, little exercise, poor lifestyle choice also tend to have neglected thier spiritual selves as well. Many, if not most of these procedures cause more pain and allow the patients to soley focus on the suffering. The doctors perform these several times a day everyday, and while they try to fix one problem they almost never get the message across or give them any tools to corret to CAUSE. Unfortunately, many of my patients never are able to enjoy the procedures results. Even more serious is that many of them die within 3 years. CABG procedures seem to do nothing to prolong ones life if one doesn't change the original factors that cause heart disease. I love my patients and while I can't make them change or make the prevent future problems I can be there for them when they are with us. I hope that this Health Care Reform does however set the stage for what does need to happen. Thank you for enightening thoughts and love.
Kerry Duba
It seems to me the solution for all our current problems comes down to public education which, until the advent of the Internet, has been totally controlled by those who profit most from public ignorance. These people will not give up their profits without a fight and most likely a violent one.
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Love and Blessings X 10,
Ed
'These people,' Ed have had their day, twill be a landslide!
At the last, we must realize the truth. People forget that thae bigt they are the government. If the people are apethetic and self centered, than the government of our country will reflect that. I think it was Franklin who said," People get exactly the government they deserve."
We get the healthcare we are willing to nurture and work for. Citizens of countires with the highest standard of living in the world pay very high taxes, but they get good service for their money. They also get 6 weeks vacation a year. Wouldn't it be interesting if all the doctors, hospitals and citizens in a city just decided that everyone was going to get basic health care. They then go to the big companies in thier town and said, "Hay, we are kicking the insurence companies out, and every worker who lives in our city limits gets free health care. Want to do business??? How many big corps would move in? The whole shegang could be paid for in sales taxes alone.
I am no expert. I know this is a complicated challenge and that it directly effects every citizen, especially the poor. But if little me can come up with a few good ideas, imagine what a whole town full of motivated citizens could come up with…
As I tell parents every day – when you want your children to change their behavior, tell them what you want them to do, not what you DON'T Want. Tell a child to stop running and see how long it lasts. Give the command down a long hallway "Walk, Please." and every kid will slow down.
It works for adults too. We, the people, have to have a clear vision of a health care system. Then we must communicate it to our legislators. The message needs to be, get it started and get it done, or we will vote for someone else.
Collect kindnesses, trust your instincts, learn happiness and then spread it all over everyone you know.
Love,
Mariahn
21st "reformation"?!?
Sounds like Armageddon!
We will get there!
Empyrius!
Good post. Fixing the health-care system is a fraction of the battle. Diet is an extremely underestimated factor for the well-being of any society. The mind is directly related to the food that is consumed. The vast confusion in american society today, especially in the right-wing, can be attributed to this factor. Junk food equals junk thoughts..and add to this all the powerful, toxic chemicals..and you got a severely fragmented mindset. By benevolent design, yoga has been exposed to the society, which has begun a silent revolution of sorts, and hopefully this brings about a major change at the core grassroots to enhance clarity.
Dear Deepakji
You are right!as always!
But I also liked-Ed Howes!Comments!
Reading both makes a good commentary about !American health care sytem its ills and solutions!
I have never thought that American masses are so helpless!till I saw the Capitilist Economy!in action!in Canada and America first hand!
I thank Gandhi and Nehru and other great Indains to put India on the middle track of scocialism!and by not following capatilist and communist models in the formative years of Inda after freedom from British!I find Indain health care system(even in its present sate!) inspite of all it's ills a better system than this highly exploitative care system in America!
I any case Middile Path! seems to be the answer to all our problems!Amen!Jai Ho!
With best wishes!
@run
(P.s. How is your health now? (by the way!).Take good care!)
Thank you Arun,
It matters little what track a nation is put on when the corporate interests get their foot in the door. If Monsanto gets its way in India, as it intends to do and has so far done, India has no future and all its farmers will be dead.
Let us daily increase in: wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.
Love and Blessings X 10,
Ed
Reports shows that job losses have slowed compared for the last few months. Is this a good sign for American workers? We need not to be confident that our jobs and finances will always do good that is why President Obama has some new plans to help you start saving money. Obama has declared that he is launching programs that will allow businesses to start funneling money straight away into retirement plans for their workers