Understanding Sick Care vs. Health Care

Ask yourself a quick question: Would you say that our health in this country is great, good, poor, or very poor?  I ask that question a lot and I get mixed answers.

In general, most people would agree that health overall in our country is poor to very poor.  We base that on many of our citizens being overweight, suffering from chronic illness, and surprisingly high infant mortality rate.  In fact, over the last several years, the infant mortality rate has been getting worse!  Check it out for yourself:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworldfactbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

Now, let’s look at where our health care system ranks compared to other countries.  In this study done in 2014, the World Health Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development collected survey data comparing the health care systems of the most industrialized countries in the world. 

If you look closely, you’ll see that the USA is last on this list and yet we pay double per person, in some cases, and definitely more than most of the other countries! So, now, would you agree that we are doing something wrong?  I believe we are, and something needs to change in our society. And soon.

One of the biggest problems I see in my practice is that we are, collectively,  reactive instead of proactive about our health.  This means we wait until we have symptoms, or worse – we wait until those symptoms are unbearable before we actually do something about our health.  I see patients all the time that have been in pain for years, but they weren’t motivated to do something about it until their pain reached a breaking point.

Our society has been trained to act in such a way.   We see commercials all the time that relate health back to symptoms and how we feel.  So, if we base our health on how we feel, and only do things once we “get sick,” is that a true health care system, or is it a sick care system?

The fact is, in our country, we have the best Crisis and Emergency care system in the world!   If you are in danger of dying, we can save your life and we are darn good at it.  However, we have turned a Crisis care system into our lifestyle.  We need drugs to wake up, drugs to fall asleep, drugs to go to the bathroom, drugs to do just about everything. That’s not what drugs were designed to do.

When penicillin first came along, it was lifesaving and it changed the way we looked at medicine.  It was amazing! But the medical system has since been bastardized.  We have been trained to become, as a society, lazy!  We think, “If I have this pain, then just give me a drug for it.”  What we don’t realize is that “this pain” is your body telling you: RED ALERT!! You have a problem!  In most cases, medications don’t fix the problem, they just turn off the alarm.

So, the bad news is that this system is not going to change overnight.  However, it can change.  We need to be educating ourselves on how to promote health and wellness in our own bodies, for our families, and for our communities. There are a lot of people and even some MDs that are starting to push for change.  You can, too!

Our office is an oasis from the sick care system.  Our primary purpose is to educate our community on how to be healthy.  It’s the only way that we go from last on this list to #1!

If you would like more information on the difference between sick care and health care, join us Tuesday nights in the office as Dr. James lectures on the "7 secrets to better health and healing."  Contact the office to reserve your seat.

You can also reserve a time to sit down with Dr. James one on one for a no-cost no obligation consultation.  Click here to request a time.  (at the link, click on the schedule now on the right-hand side)