Rethinking Healthcare

The clouds are rolling in, it’s not really a surprise for those that have looked at all the early warning signs.

A dark storm has been brewing just over our horizon for decades and is heading this way, bringing with it a downfall that is causing a lot of damage to our family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and us.

Frightening stats that prove the point that it’s time to change course…

Health care spending in the US is more than $3.65 Trillion, which is more than 4 X the amount spent on national defense and almost 40 X the amount spent on homeland security.

The $3.65 trillion in spending represents $11,212 per person, with 59% of the spending going to hospitals, doctors, and clinical services.

Prescription drug spending is up 3.3% year over year. Under private health insurance, spending per person rose 4.5% between 2017 and 2018, even though the same number of people were enrolled.

Healthcare costs are sky rocketing.

It’s not that all insurance companies are greedy or that doctors are gouging their patients.

It’s a bigger problem than that…

We’re getting much sicker, suffering with so many chronic diseases at progressively earlier ages.

What we’re doing to help clearly isn’t working.

There is a slight glimmer of light breaking through the clouds that can allow you to escape the storms.

More on that in a moment.

In 2018 and 2019, the United States US spent 17.8% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care.

About 18% of America’s Gross Domestic Product is spent on medical care.

$18 of every $100 of our economy goes toward covering the cost of being sick through medical care.

The National Coalition on Health Care reports that the US health care spending is going to increase over the next decade, reaching $4 trillion in 2015, or 20% of the GDP (last figures that I could find)!

Did you know that Starbucks Coffee spends more money on health care costs than they do on coffee and General Motors spends more on health care costs than they do on steel?

The US spends more on health care than other industrialized nation.

Nearly 45 Million Americans are uninsured, many due to the high cost of health insurance.

Every 30 seconds in the US someone files for bankruptcy due to a serious health problem and their medical bills.

According to a Harvard study, 50% of all bankruptcies in the US are the result of excessive medical expenses.

Experts predict retiring elderly couples will need $200,000 in savings just to pay for the most basic medical coverage.

Many others believe that this figure is far too conservative and that $300,000-$500,000 is a more realistic number.

These massive economic increases mean that people will increasingly have problems affording medical care.

This is why the government has been looking at taking over healthcare. This is not a political statement, but this is a terrible idea based on how the government program, Medicare, is doing.

Let’s look at what we’re getting for the investment.

While spending is highest, the United States ranks 27th in the world for its levels of health care.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, premiums for employer sponsored health insurance in the US have risen 5 X faster than workers’ earnings since 2000.

Scary Health Statistics…

The American healthcare industry was worth $24.7 billion in 1960. It is now worth $3.65 trillion.

Sounds expensive, but maybe it’s been worth it in that we cured chronic diseases and helped millions of Americans look, feel, and perform their best every day.

Let’s see what we’ve gotten for these staggering healthcare costs …

• 4/10 Americans are morbidly obese (40%!!). Over 7/10 are overweight (70%). Obesity related health issues cost over $150 billion a year in the US alone.
• More than 133 million Americans, 45% of the US population, have at least one chronic condition. These conditions include arthritis, asthma, cancer, cardiovascular (heart) disease, depression and diabetes, though these are only a few of many chronic illnesses that cause so much suffering for so many Americans.
• Diabetes is one of the Fastest Growing Diseases in America. Over 100 million adults in the US have diabetes or pre-diabetes according to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control. Alarmingly, the rate of type 2 diabetes has doubled over the last five years. It’s clearly a lifestyle disease.

The five leading causes of death in the United States are heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, and injuries.

Together they accounted for 74% of all U.S. deaths in 2015, with rates for each cause varying greatly from state to state.

Currently, the top ten health problems in America (not all of them chronic) are heart disease, cancer, stroke, respiratory disease, injuries, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, influenza and pneumonia (this tends to be in people with many other chronic diseases and very poor health), kidney disease, and septicemia.

Looking a little further, going back a step is that the vast majority of these problems are lifestyle related.

Most can be prevented.

You do have to change lifestyle though if you want to prevent them or change course.

Certainly it would be better to change before any of these things happen, but since we often don’t have any major symptoms outside of… some stomach problems, headaches, pain, weight gain, lightheadedness, fatigue, and probably a couple of other signs that things are really going wrong… we wait.

Not realizing that our house is on fire and a lot of damage is occurring in the background.

We haven’t smelled enough smoke yet.

The proverbial fire alarms have been turned off because the medications reduce our symptoms.

We take some meds and think the problem we’re having that was caused by lifestyle is handled, even though we didn’t change.

This is why we’re spending so much money of healthcare (a misnomer, it’s crisis care and symptom relief care), experiencing so many problems causing us to not be able to enjoy our lives, and ultimately dying early.

The diseases that are causing so much suffering and early death are almost exclusively from lifestyle problems.

Think about how these chronic diseases being treated though.

Not with lifestyle recommendations that will change the person’s life but generally with medications to help improve a symptom. In the US, we are treating lifestyle problems with medications instead of lifestyle changes… and the consequences are devastating.

Let me ask you a quick question that most people never think about…

What type of healthcare practitioner helps a person with a healthy lifestyle (which is addressing the cause of many health problems)?

• Does your family doctor help by offering detailed and helpful lifestyle recommendations for your specific problems that likely determine your health and very likely many chronic disease progressions?
• The medical specialist like your stomach doctor, rheumatologist, endocrinologist, …?

All these medical professionals have a very important purpose in helping you with various health conditions.

However, getting personalized lifestyle recommendations to improve your health and wellness is very unlikely to come from them.

They have other important tasks to do and rarely have the time to spend helping you with lifestyle, even if it was an area of expertise for them.

This is where frustration comes in for many different people.

People often want things they can do to help themselves live a healthier life regardless of their diagnosis… BUT they’re expecting it from the wrong health care practitioner.*

*There are some exceptions, but this is generally the case.

The truth is that the health practitioner that is ideally suited to helping you with lifestyle recommendations for health and wellness is your chiropractor, especially one with a focus on health and wellness.

Dr. Hagebusch in our Texarkana Chiropractic Clinic helps people every day with these things so that a person doesn’t just feel better for their migraines, neck pain, whiplash, back pain, sciatica, or whatever brought them in…

BUT they also discover how to improve their health and wellness which really changes their lives in a major way to help each person not become one of the statistics listed above.