It’s been decades that we’ve been told our medical system is broken. We might have known this long before COVID, but unfortunately now we see its gaping holes so much more clearly.
COVID deaths were so sadly multiplied by the inept medical care provided to too many hospitalized patients. For example, it took literally one year to realize that placing patients on their bellies saved lives by allowing more oxygen to move into their lungs. What kind of craziness is this? Has common sense been eradicated from medical education and the practice of medicine? Didn’t we all know lungs expand better if you’re on your belly? And what about blowing people’s lungs out with respirators that didn’t help?
I listen to horror story after story from my patients about the fearmongering that rules the healthcare system and about how many unnecessary tests and procedures we are subjected to on an ongoing basis. Only yesterday I heard a commercial on the radio from a cancer center telling listeners in no uncertain terms that “cancer rates have gone up” since COVID because patients no longer show up for the routine screenings they used to have before COVID.
Where is the data to back up that statement? Why is this ad even allowed to be broadcast? Is it because freedom of speech now means freedom to bully and scare the living daylights out of patients and open the door for the healthcare system to make up for all the money it lost during the pandemic? How horrific is this?
The fact that we have the most expensive healthcare in the world, but our outcomes are not so great might make one wonder where have we gone wrong?
We are lucky and rich and we get access to the first vaccines, yet politics and fear stop us from getting out of the pandemic. We throw out millions of doses of vaccines while the rest of the world is dying while waiting to be inoculated.
We spend money like it’s water and never get to the root cause of the problems we are so glibly treating with drugs and procedures and testing. We don’t really help patients, we only make more money for the broken system.
Every patient I speak to tells me how afraid they are to go to the hospital. There is no such thing as physical examinations or history-taking anymore. Decades have proven these diagnostic tools to work, yet now we have replaced them with an obligatory CT scan and 20 test tubes of blood. Why wouldn’t people be afraid to go to hospitals?
You think you’re fortunate, so your insurance will cover it all? Well, it won’t. The money comes from each one of us. If you think Medicare or Medicaid or third-party insurers take care of us, the truth is they don’t. No one is looking out for our best interests.
All of these tests, medications, and even surgeries are the last things you need unless you get run over by a bus, have an internal catastrophe or are in some other kind of accident. We don’t talk about the root cause of our health problems because if we start there, we will eliminate trillions of dollars overnight from healthcare expenditures. We say we talk about prevention, but we don’t. Our doctors tell us they specialize in prevention, yet it’s all lip service. There is no training in medical school on prevention. It’s still considered voodoo by conventional medical training. But the truth is simple. We can easily own the change and make our lives better. Here’s how we are doing the damage ourselves:
- We still drink alcohol like fish, but no doctor tells us to just stop before we get sick.
- We don’t hydrate with water and wait until dehydration sends us to the emergency room.
- We eat junk food and don’t notice that’s why we are full of inflammation and become chronically ill.
- We are sedentary and spend our lives watching the small, medium and large blue screens that destroy our vision with impunity.
- We don’t sleep even though we know sleep rejuvenates and heals us.
- We don’t meditate or breathe or just manage our stress even though we know the less we react to stress, the less we will get sick and the better our immune system will work.
- We don’t stop. We just keep running ourselves into the ground. And having more tests and procedures and taking more medication is only another way to destroy our lives and avoid preventing disease.
Use the COVID crisis to stop and look at your life. You should use the healthcare system when it serves you, not the other way around. Focus on finding the best ways to balance your life and enjoy its every moment. Running to the doctor will not increase your lifespan or decrease your chances of getting a chronic illness. The solution is within you—not in the healthcare system.