“We don’t have a healthcare system in this country, we have a disease management system.” ~ Andrew Weil M.D.
“The American healthcare system is broken. American healthcare costs are rising so rapidly that they could reach $4.2 trillion annually, roughly 20% of our gross domestic product, within ten years. We pay more, yet our health outcomes are worse!”
Watch the movie ESCAPE FIRE. It “examines the powerful forces maintaining the status quo, a medical industry designed for quick fixes rather than prevention, for profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care. After decades of resistance, a movement to bring innovative high-touch, low-cost methods of prevention and healing into our high-tech, costly system is finally gaining ground. Award-winning filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke follow dramatic human stories as well as leaders fighting to transform healthcare at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government, and even the US military. ESCAPE FIRE is about finding a way out. It’s about saving the health of a nation.”
The present healthcare system is generating rivers of money that are flowing into very few pockets. We need a whole new kind of medicine. Here are the issues:
An Entrenched System – Pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals, and insurance companies are all profiting on our declining health. And all those companies spend their money lavishly – millions of dollars go to Washington lobbyists – to ensure that nothing ever changes.
Overmedication – We spend roughly $300 billion annually on pharmaceutical drugs – nearly as much as the rest of the world combined.
Overtreatment – One of the hardest things to understand as a patient is that “more” doesn’t necessarily mean “better.” But it’s imperative that we do. Recent studies have shown that “more” can often mean “worse” when it comes to our health.
Paying More Getting Less – We pay more, yet our health outcomes are worse. We give well-intentioned doctors, nurses, and hospitals the wrong tools and the wrong incentives, and it results in higher costs and poorer health.
Preventing Disease – 75% of healthcare costs go to treating diseases that are largely preventable. That’s a lot of unnecessary money, and worse, a lot of unnecessary disease.
Reimbursement – The healthcare system often uses a “a fee-for-service” model of payment – government or private insurers pay a hospital or a physician every time a procedure is performed.
Treating the Whole Person – Your body isn’t a car, but that’s how it’s handled when you take it into the doctor’s office. Instead of being treated as a person, your broken parts get fixed separately, one by one.
Get educated on these issues and add your voice to a growing chorus for change.
Click here to open The First Aid Kit – your chance to speak up, spread the word, and be a part of the solution.
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