What is Health Care?

Would you rather:

• be healthy - or not sick?
• be happy - or not sad?
• be wealthy - or not poor?
• be intelligent - or not dumb?

Many of us are living life on the tract of avoiding the negative aspect rather than attempting to pursue the positive. This mode of thinking is very similar to the allopathic (medical model) of health care that we have in our country and it does not allow one to live life at their fullest potential.

True health care should promote health, prevent disease, and provide education for the public to increase overall wellness. In the United States, the mainstream system of health care is the medical model, or allopathic model of health care. This is not health care; it is sick care. In general, the medical field that we have today does not promote health, prevent disease, or provide education to the public. There may be individual doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc. that do attempt to provide actual health care to patients, but on the whole, the allopathic model is one of disease care - or sick care. This type of system is needed for those who are already sick and have not worked to maintain health and wellness, for those who have contracted a sudden bacterial illness that their body can not fight off, and for situations of trauma. On the whole, however, this should not be the mainstream model for health and wellness in society.

Here are some facts that are available about our society's method of "health care":

• 90% of upper respiratory infections (including children's ear infections) are viral, not bacterial - this means that antibiotics will not treat the viral infection -- however -- almost 50% of patients with these infections are given antibiotics
• Dr. David Eddy, MD, PhD notes that only about 15% of the medical interventions are supported by scientific evidence
• According to the National Vital Statistics Report, cardiovascular disease is the number 1 killer in the US. In 2005, over 650,000 people died from cardiovascular disease. This disease is largely preventable and should not be claiming this many lives per year!
• ae times that the treatment for the disease is worse than the disease itself, for example, according to Dr. David Graham of the FDA, the prescription drug Vioxx caused about 60,000 deaths before being pulled from the shelves in 2004.
• Even prescription drugs that are prescribed correctly cause approximately 100,000 deaths per year according to the Journal of the American Medical Association
• drug related problems are costing the U.S. BILLIONS of dollars per year
  • these problems also kill 198,815 people per year
  • they put 8.8 million people in the hospital every year and account for up to 28% of all hospital admissions per year
• medical errors cause (per year): according to the Western Journal of Medicine 06/2000
  • 116,000,000 extra doctor visits
  • 77,000,000 extra prescriptions
  • 17,000,000 extra emergency room visits
  • 8,000,000 extra hospitalizations
  • 3,000,000 extra long term care admissions
  • 199,000 additional deaths
  • $77,000,000,000 in extra costs

It is no wonder that our country is in such a health care crisis! I can't imagine thinking that these errors are acceptable to anyone, yet we continue to follow the path to sickness rather than wellness. Our bodies have natural, innate abilities to heal, as long as we are given the opportunity. Remove the interference in the body, and let it heal itself! Seek health, not sickness. Seek true health care - not sick care!