The Real Health Care Crisis in America

January 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

The Real Health Care Reform Issue

The real dilemma of health care is not in a lack of funds but in the maldistribution and disinformation the media feeds unwary Americans.

There are too many interests in medicine scrambling for a huge chunk of the medical funds. Only trickles will ever make their way into the lives of tax-paying citizens. The reason that many practitioners went to medical school in the first place has since been put on the back shelf- like a small secondary intention overshadowed by pharmaceutical giants as they cast their nets to bag the biggest share of the profits while watching this nation get sicker with each passing year.

Healing requires NON COMMITTED funds- no strings attached. You cannot fund unbiased education from the deep pockets of pharmaceutical giants paradoxically holding political power over how medicine should be taught and practiced in this country. If we could find generous competing pockets that will fund educating our community to create a sense of personal responsibility, that may begin the changes towards disease prevention. That may reverse the harm that has been done by the manipulations of monetized TV ads and drug promotions. That would be a new direction towards reversal of our so called, ‘Health Care Crisis’.

If you have not seen the movie ‘The Whole Truth’ I invite you to do so now and to learn more about the ways that you can prevent illness through good habits of healthy nutrition. It’s far time to take the initiative into our own hands, for our own lives and make health care reform happen from the inside out… it begins in the home, in the habits that we personally practice and in those that we teach our children to practice as we lead through example.

Here is the reprint from an email I received today which sparked these words…

Pictured is a young physician by the name of Dr. Starner Jones. His short two-paragraph letter to the White House accurately puts the blame on “Culture Crisis” instead of “Health Care Crisis”. Here’s the quick read:

Dear Mr. President:

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

Ours is a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as “Medicaid”! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.

“And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman’s health care?”

I contend that our nation’s “health care crisis” is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a “crisis of culture”, a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that “I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me”.

Once you fix this “culture crisis” that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you’ll be amazed at how quickly our nation’s health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,
STARNER JONES, MD