AN ANSWER TO THE NATIONAL HEALTH CARE DILEMMA

It’s a subject so many people are talking about, thinking about, worrying about and pontificating about: What to do about the health care crisis?

Where’s the money going to come from to fix the problem -- employers? The government? Individuals? How do we get all those people without insurance coverage the care they need? How do we lower the costs?

There are lots of questions, lots of fear, lots of resentment. The president is talking about making sacrifices. The government has a plan. The problem is that nothing fundamental changes in the plan. The plan does not call for a new paradigm. It continues to dance around the problem.

What’s the problem? What we’re doing now merely masquerades as health care. Let’s call it what it really is: disease care.

No amount of disease care will ever improve Americans’ health, just as playing defense never scores any points. Where our system excels is in first aid or crisis care, heroic efforts to save lives in split seconds. Where it fails miserably is improving health. The average cost per person in the disease care system is more than $8,000 per year. Approximately 106,000 people die each year from adverse reactions to prescribed drugs at a cost of $12 billion.  Roughly 115,000 people die each year from bedsores, costing $55 billion. Unnecessary procedures “only” kill 37,136 people but rack up $122 billion in wasted money.

The problem isn’t a lack of efficiency, who takes over programs or increasing insurance coverage (and if you do have coverage, why would you want to access the system that produces results like those above?). The problem is that the system is broken, beyond repair. When a multimillionaire, Larry Miller, who owned the Utah Jazz and many other enterprises, has both legs amputated and dies of complications of Type 2 diabetes, it certainly wasn’t for lack of the best care he could get. Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. You don’t catch it, you live yourself into it. Cancer, heart disease and most of the major killers today are the results of lifestyles that encourage these diseases.

According to nutrition expert Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., many Americans are “vertically ill” – not sick enough to be confined to bed, but far from functioning at optimal health. Lifestyle is a major reason. As convenience foods become more popular, healthy, nutrient-dense foods are replaced with empty-calorie foods. Growing numbers of people are out of shape, overweight and inadequately nourished.

So what do you do? Change your lifestyle. Make different choices. If you see most people heading in a bad direction with their health, chances are you’ll get a better outcome if you go in the opposite direction. Let’s look at some results people are getting:

 1. Since 1999, the Illinois Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO let policyholders choose a medical doctor (MD) or doctor of chiropractic (DC) as their primary care physician (PCP). After seven years and 70,274 member hours of claims data, the following results were observed:
-- A 60.2% decrease in hospital admissions for policyholders who chose chiropractors, compared with those choosing an MD.
-- A 59% decrease in the number of hospital days with the chiropractors
-- A 62% decrease in outpatient surgeries with the chiropractors
-- An 85% decrease in pharmaceutical costs with chiropractors

2. A placebo-controlled study published on WebMD.com on March 16, 2007, reported that a special chiropractic adjustment of the Atlas vertebra can significantly lower blood pressure.

“This procedure has the effect of not one but two blood-pressure medications given in combination,” study leader George Bakris, MD, director of the University of Chicago Hypertension Center, told WebMD. “And it seems to be adverse-event-free. We saw no side effects and no problems.”

“When the statistician brought me the data, I actually didn’t believe it. It was way too good to be true,” Bakris said. “The statistician said, ‘I don’t even believe it. But we checked for everything again and there it was.’ ”

The Journal of Hypertension found that suboptimal blood pressure cost U.S. $370 billion globally in 2001. This represents about 10 percent of the world's total health care expenditures.

3. ICON Health and Fitness, headquartered in Logan, Utah, is the world's largest manufacturer of home exercise equipment. It has annual sales of $710 million and a staff of 4,239. ICON launched a wellness program using computerized electrodermal testing and whole-food supplements for a group of employees. The company saw a return on investment of 10.4:1, saving $3,505 per person. So they made the program a part of every employee’s benefit package.

The choice is yours. Keep doing what you’ve always done and keep getting the results you’ve gotten used to. Or learn what people are doing to get and stay healthy, then do it yourself. It’s your life. The government isn’t coming to save you. Stop acting with dis-ability and choose to act with response-ability: respond with ability! You have it. You come “fully equipped.” Give your body the chance to amaze you with its ability to heal itself. You’ll save money and your life!