REAL Healthcare Reform Is Available to You Right Now
Much
has been written and said about Healthcare reform in the U.S. recently. So much so that it has become a lightening
rod topic and has inspired both healthy and destructive debate. So, I am going out on a limb to share my
opinion about REAL healthcare reform, which is available to anyone right now,
for very little cost.
From
what I understand by researching this topic, the goal of healthcare reform is both
cost reduction and quality of life improvement for more Americans. To me, a critical tactic in doing both is
prevention of the chronic diseases that are increasing for many Americans.
These include diabetes and heart disease which consume a disproportionate
amount of healthcare costs. These are
also known as “lifestyle” diseases because they can be controlled, and in many
cases reversed through lifestyle changes.
Now,
don’t get me wrong – I am not minimizing the seriousness or suffering of these
diseases – I am merely saying that long term the most sustainable way to reduce
the costs and effects of these diseases is by preventing them in the first
place. Prevention includes changes in diet, exercise, stress levels, and other choices that
maximize the body’s ability to heal and repair itself from the daily grind of
living. And, perhaps most importantly, lifestyle changes have ZERO negative
side effects, unlike the drugs required to manage these diseases!
Again,
I am not minimizing the initial effort it takes to make lifestyle changes, for
that takes courage and persistence, based on my own experience. But combined with the almost immediate
increase in energy and vitality these lifestyle changes give us, migrating to a
healthier lifestyle to prevent long term deterioration of health seems like
something that should be included in the government’s health care plan and
certainly deserves as much funding and attention as treatment of the diseases
that cripple so many of our fellow Americans.
Interested
in instituting your own REAL healthcare reform? Checkout my other blogs on how to make sustainable lifestyle changes.
Categories: Nutrition,Weight Loss,Aging with Grace
Tags: quantum wellness diet inner peace weight loss happiness nutrition
I agree that we are responsible for our own health. For some people my age, baby boomer's, this is a unfamiliar concept. When I was younger there were not as many specialists in the medical field. You had a family doctor who attended to your illness. The responsibility for your health was more on the physician than the patient. There was no emphasis on exercise, healthy eating habits or lifestyle choices. You went to the doctor, he prescribed medicine and the insurance paid for it. So for some people, myself, this is new, welcomed, but just getting used to it.
One of the things I do wish to comment in the current health care debate is that the status quo is a burden on us all. I had occasion to visit an emergency room recently. The emergency room waiting time was ridiculously long and the reason was that most of the patients were children with colds or sniffles. These problems should be addressed at a doctor's office - not in an emergency room. The parents of these children have no insurance and the emergency room is the only place they can get treatment as there are not enough free clinics to meed the demand.
Emergency room treatment is extremely expensive and is not the most efficient way to deal with a cold. Whether we like it or not the taxpayer is paying for this approach to health care. It seems to me that it would make more sense to somehow get the uninsured on some sort of insurance that would allow visits to a physician for routine care. Visits to an emergency room should be for the unforeseen accident or sudden event. Overcrowding of our emergency rooms with, what should be, routine doctor visits is expensive and dangerous to those with life threatening events.
I must say that I didn't make a very responsible lifestyle choice. Rather than waiting 4-5 hours to be tended to, I decided to go home stanch the bleeding myself, give up on having stitches and make a margarita for the pain.
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