The Cost of Ineffective Healthcare
Why medical insurance is getting more expensive every year.
Currently healthcare costs are over 3 trillion a year and about 18% of our GDP (gross domestic product). In the 1960’s only 5% of GDP was healthcare. All factors considered; healthcare is grossly costing about $12,000 per person currently where it only cost $150 per person in the 60’s (1).
So why is this happening? Granted there are several factors ranging from greed to inefficiency, but the largest or greatest factor is our solutions to health problems are not very effective. A growing number of people are realizing this as they face a personal health crisis. The solutions they are given are not solving their problems, they have to look for solutions outside of “the system”. They are learning the lifestyle we have been made to believe is “normal” is creating an environment that breeds disease. It has taken generations of marketing campaigns but what we believe is a “normal” way to live actually creates an environment that promotes disease.
While this has been happening the entire healthcare industry has been focusing on how to collect the money they need as a business from shrinking healthy workforce (2) to pay for not only their own insurance, but for the insurance and healthcare costs of the growing population of chronically ill patients.
If you believe the marketing messages that are plastered on every channel you might believe we live in a time with the greatest healthcare advancements in the world’s history. If that is the case, shouldn’t we be seeing less health problems, a greater number of cures, and a healthier workforce?
Instead we are seeing chronic diseases beginning at younger ages. About 25% of children are on a potential lifelong medication before leaving elementary school and over half of our kids have at least one chronic diagnosis (3). So if healthcare is getting better, why are kids and adults getting sicker? Why is our healthy workforce shrinking? Why do we have such a poor infant mortality rate compared to the rest of the developed world?
The truth is the advancements we are seeing are not in healing and cures but in technology aimed towards greater palliation.
There has never been a more effective tool at healing the body than the body itself. Most technology isn’t using or supporting the body’s innate power to self-heal but forcing the body to do something we think it should do with our inadequate understanding of health. This in most cases is just suppressing a symptom or trading one symptom or problem for a whole new set of symptoms.
There is a place in medicine for suppressing or palliating symptoms, but when our entire system is based on symptom treatment rather than treating the root or foundational imbalances that are leading the body to produce the symptoms, we will never see cures or a resolution of the health problems. As we continue the current status quo or “standard of care” the healthy population will continue to shrink and so will their income as a larger percentage of their income needs to not only pay for their healthcare but for the growing number of those who cannot work.
Though there are numerous reasons to why healthcare costs rise each year, the main issue is we have a shrinking population of healthy people who have to pay for the ever growing amount of sick people who can no longer work and be self-sufficient.
This is also why a “universal” or government provided healthcare policy is not the solution. The shrinking healthy workforce will still have to pay for those who can’t work, but when you add in government inefficiency that price will increase even more. Guaranteeing access to medicine when that medicine doesn’t treat the root issues or cure the problem but “manage” the problem will be a costly solution.
References:
1. https://www.thebalance.com/causes-of-rising-healthcare-costs-4064878
2. https://taxfoundation.org/us-labor-force-smaller-today-past-30-years
3. https://www.westonaprice.org/podcast/72-fighting-for-health-freedom/