If You're Not Part Of The Healthcare Cost Solution, You're Part Of The Problem

Drzwell, thank you for your comment and response. Yes, I believe like you that laziness and lack of respsonsibility is the main point of my bog. Unfortunately I think that physicians, insurance carriers and the healthcare system have fueled the problems of higher costs and lack of responsibity. It's called learned helplessness. They have taught us to be helpless and rely on them for most everything answers. I have learned from this blog that most people lack the knowledge to what is living healthy and have no personal health plan to preventive. Now it is comping back to bite us. Physicians have been too focused on treating the symptoms with drugs and other treatments and tests because of the money involved. They have in essence said do what your doing and if you have health problems we have drugs and treatments that can help. They have not taken responsibility and time to educate patients on healthy diet plans and wellness living,and monitoring lifestyle changes. For the public at large the dietetic society has not been effective at all. Insurance companies and healthplans or those who administer health plans should be willing to require insured people to be educated in prevention lifestyle when they sign up for a plan and teach how the insured can contribute to saving money. The insurance companies, employers should be willing to offer perks, discounts etc who have demonstrated they have taken a prevention class, made health improvements (weight loss,quite smoking drugs, in a weekly fitness plan, or have not used their a significant part of their health plan. Those that choose not to participate in a cost savings plan would be required to pay the higher costs as an abuser of the system. This is what I am talking about when I asked the original question. Everyone in the system shows accountability. Yes, disease rates would go down and yes costs would go down. Its proven and common sense and you don't have to be a physician to figure it out.

If all the doctors, Hospitals, and healthcare facilities suddenly cut all their fees in half, would that solve the Heathcare Crisis facing our country? Would all the Chronic Diseases suddenly decrease in occurance. Would people suddenly look at the label before setting the table? Would the incidence of people taking a walk after dinner increase? Laziness and a lack of responsibility for one's health is the current crisis.

Their are ways to cut health insurance costs for living healthier for your business. Talk to a myriad of corporate fitness or corporate health companies. You maybe suprised with the statistics they can show. Try googling to find one in your home town. Yes, for those who maybe cynical about eating natural foods as a way to save their health and lessen costs they will save your health, and reduce the insurance nightmare, and the drug dependancy. I know this from personal experience. drhealth

Sean and johnseville are making more of my point is that we each have a lot more control over how we feel by acting wise about our health and lifestyle. We don't have to be at the mercy of the healthcare system as much especially when it comes to the more catastrophic health problems that are devistating. I definitely believe the healthcare system and pharmaceutical companies take advantage of use all. There are no doubt problems. They have made us too dependent on them and we have bought into it too much. It's called "learned helplessness". Many of us have become lazy about learning and doing for ourselves. Because of that we paying for it with our health and our money. We don't need all of the pharmaceuticals to get the results they say we need. If we all started more of a movement of living preventively where we didn't require these expensive diagnostic tests, pills and procedures and demanded more from our physicans, and dieticians that they get educated better, teaching real basics of health, diet, exercise etc to every patient to help us help ourselves, many costs would have to down. I think thats not realist for now in the system. We need to quit being dependent on doctors to do what we should be doing anyway for ourselves. I just believe we abuse the system and over use it. I can get just as good of results or better with some super foods, nutritional supplement products, etc as many of these drugs doctors prescribe without the side effects. Does anyone agree? Right now 45 million Americans lack health insurance and it's probably going to grow. Having access to the best insurance doesn't solve their health problems. They are highly at risk. These people need help being taught how to live preventively as well as us. What we each do or don't do for ourselves maybe our only healthcare program because their is no insurance. I suggest some books like Superfoods Rx, and Superfoods Healthstyle, by Dr. Stephen Pratt M.D., best sellers. There are many others on the shelves. What do you think? drhealth

I am amazed how many people don't understand even the basics of preventive health. I am seventy four years old. I don't have any health coverage (except accident insurance). I have Never been sick in my life. You know why? Well you guesswed it right. I have followed preventive measure for health all my life. I don't think there is any need for any health insurance if we follow the simple basics rules of preventive health. I notice that there are many who have blog entries encouraging us to folloow preventive health. One doctor (Dr Shahid) who is promoting his Six Principles of Health in detail, is excellant. I agree with him whole heartedly. If we follow his six principles of health we will never have to see any health care provider (Physician, dentist, Chiropracter etc) for as long as we live. I would sincerely advice everyone to read his Six principles of health in these blogs. Stop complaing about health care and third party health insurance programs. It is your health and it is in your hands. Learn the art of preventive health and you will never need any health care or health insurance ever in your life. Stop funding the greedy health insurance and Phamaceutical companies. They are the menance of our society. Sooner we get rid of them better it is for all of us. It is all in our own hands. Simply follow the preventive health programs. Believe me it is not difficult to follow once you get used to it.

If no one ever had health problems, what would the cost of health insurance be? I'm pretty sure it would be zero. Anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you health insurance. If only ten percent of the population ever had health problems, the cost for insurance would be very low. I don't think this is an outrageous assumption. The price of any insurance (health, auto, whatever) is tied to risk, the risk that someone will make a claim against their policy. If a greater percentage of the population is at risk to experience health problems, regardless of the cause, then insurance premiums are going to be higher. Sure, insurance companies have fixed costs like paperwork, administration, etc. They may even be wasting a good portion of the money they take in on bureaucracy and other inefficiencies, but I have a hard time believing that their premiums aren't tied to risk in some way. If someone has information to the contrary, I'd like to hear it. I could be wrong about all that, but if I'm not, I don't see how anyone could reasonably argue that if a large percentage of the population was suddenly less at risk for developing health problems, then insurance costs wouldn't go down. This discussion isn't about an insurance company giving an individual or a very small group a break because they've shown they are healthier than the rest of the population. That just isn't how insurance companies operate. However, by being healthier, you are contributing to lower health care costs, even if it is an extremely small contribution. If you disagree, then I certainly hope you don't waste your time voting in national elections, because your vote counts for just about as much. I'm not saying anything about the morality of not taking care of yourself, just that I believe there is a financial consequence for society at large, which I believe is the point of the original blog entry.

drhealth, are you kidding me? Do you really believe that if a large percentage of Americans got super healthy over the next 12 months that ANYONE'S insurance premiums would decrease? Do you really think that would also lead to more Americans actually having access to affordable health insurance? Do you think if my company could show Blue Shield that we have a gym in-house, and that everyone uses it, and that everyone here is super healthy, that that would have a positive effect on what Blue Shield charges us for health insurance? Come on. I rarely go to the doctor either, just like you. I am fairly healthy. But I pay $500 a month for coverage for myself, my wife, and our 1 year old son. I pay that whether we go to the doctors or not. So how does your plan help me and the many others out there like me? Sure, I might save some co-pays, but that is not the unaffordable part of health care. Again, I agree with you that we all need to be responsibly healthy. But I disagree with you if you think that will solve anything about our health care system. You can eat all the veggies and nuts you want, that doesn't do anything about your access to affordable health insurance. The only thing it might do is decrease your need to go to the doctor, whether you have insurance or not. Something not mentioned here so far are the exorbitant prices that hospitals charge patients and insurance companies. When my wife had our son we received an itemized bill. She was given 3 Alleve pills per day, for 3 days, total of 9 pills. Their charge for those pills was $11 per pill! That's right, $99 for 9 Aleve pills. You could buy a lifetime supply of the stuff for that much money. Now I don't know how much money the insurance company actually agreed to pay for those pills, but I bet it wasn't the fair market value of an Aleve pill. The going rate is $10 for 100 pills. So that's about 10 cents per pill. Do you think that's what the insurance company paid the hospital, 90 cents for those 9 pills? Or do you think they agreed to something less than the $11 asking price, but whatever it was, it wasn't 10 cents, we all know that. This is simply another HUGE part of the problem in this country. The hospitals and doctors overcharge the insurance companies and the insurance companies pay less than what is asked for, but it's still a whole lot more than they should pay. And who pays for that in the end? Patients do. I could eat 10 apples and 14 boxes of raisins today and it wouldn't do a thing to fix this mess.

This my view to the original question that I asked in this blog. We all know that their are a lot of different factors playing into the the rise in healthcare costs some of which we individualy can have a factor in and those of which some of you have cited ie. immigrants etc that are harder to control. What I know from working in the preventive healthcare field is this. Everyone has choices for our personal lifestyles everyday ie. what we eat, whether or not we exercise, amount of sleep, control of stress, spiritual balance, whether we choose medications or natural health products, etc. Everyone can make these changes and have them work if it's important enough. We all have the same amount of hours in a day. Its all priority. Health controls too many other factors in our lives not to make it high on the list. If Americans were to spend the necessary time educating themselves and thoughfully living a preventive health lifestyle daily together we could save the healthcare system millions of dollars. We would feel better, be more in control of our lives (knowing when it is more essential to go to the doctor and when it's not so essential having the solutions to solve many of our own health problems) and be more productive in everything. I say quit the excuses because it will contribute to the loss of insurance or quality of organized healthcare. I and my family rarely go the the doctor because we have learned to take care of many more simple health issues which has helped prevent larger potential health issues. Yes, their are a lot of problems with the system but each of us can have an effect on keeping our costs in check whether we have insurance or not. Any corporate health programs statistics especially, proves the validity of cost savings, and increased productivity with prevention. I have a program I live by that I believe works. It's common sense, not a tree huggers life. Eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, greens,little meat, little sugar and white flour, and rarely fast food ( a big health killer). Exercise 5-6 days a week 20-30 minutes No work on Sundays. Spiritual, mental health and family day. Regenerates the body and reduces mental and physical stress. Take vitamins, etc daily. I have learned many natural health supplement and right foods are as powerful as many drugs without the side effects. I have taught and sold many doctors about these things over the years. This is what I want to encourage everyone on the blog, to educate themselves about and do for themselves. We have got to be more responsible for knowing what to do and do it. Quit running to the doctor when our bodies have problems so someone else will pay for it and fix the problem ie drugs and surgery etc. What is your experience and plan with this? I am the drhealth in my family. Drhealth You should be your own doctor health to a degree.

Bryan, that was perfect. Thank you for taking the emotion out of the topic and being so clear on the point(s). The cost of healthcare(private coverage) still shouldn't be affected by the Government's coverage of indigents. I believe that if healthcare were more affordable (privately) it would take a significant burdan off the "system" in general. BlueCat, those stats are higher, but I can't help but question the margin of error in Govt. data. I'm only in the 70K range anually and many friends are in the same bracket. About half of us are without coverage. There are certainly times that I wish I still made 40K but had good coverage (not often tho) ;) Something needs to be done, soon. I just don't see how companies can/will be able to provide coverage for their employees at these costs. It's really the "smaller" companies that support the economy when you compare with the larger corporations. I wish I could afford coverage for my employees again.