I was pleased the Empire dedicated the entire opinion page to the important topic of curtailing health care costs in the May 22 issue. It was also good to get a sense of our legislators working across what sometimes seems an impassible divide towards getting better value for our health care expenditures. Dr. Alan Gross’ salient point about health care costs crippling businesses and school districts is urgent. However none of these Alaskans thought leaders addressed the fundamental flaw in our approach to “health care.”
As a society, we have placed value on illness. We manage disease, and not very efficiently. We shine in emergency medicine. Some of our most progressive and effective physicians end up as ER docs, where the conventional model of care is actually appropriate. For the majority of unwell-ness, however, we are remiss to run up huge lab, radiology and prescription costs without first and foremost promoting wellness. When we have an industrial and corporate approach to “health care” we actually place value on chronic illness. Dialysis centers are a growth industry.
We are a toxic nation and that is why we have the highest rates per capita of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other “lifestyle” illnesses. We must begin to value health. Our founding fathers intended it to be an inalienable right. They never imagined the marketing of disease management.
I strongly advocate moving toward a single payer system because the current hodgepodge of insurers is an expensive administrative nightmare and contributes very little to actual health. Alaska recently formulated a chapter of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program of which I am a member. However, the $1,000 per month price tag quoted by Dr. Gross to buy into Medicaid is out of reach for most.
An immediate albeit partial fix would be to outlaw direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. This egregious overreach is absent in all other “first world” countries. The other large driver of cost, besides the ridiculous markup on drugs, is physician fees, particularly specialists. Why should a urologist earn 10 times more than a plumber? Or an orthopedic surgeon 20 times more than a finish carpenter?
When we as a society insist on policy which values health, as many of us do as individuals, we will start to turn the tide. We will choose high-quality food whenever possible. We will reserve pharmaceutical fixes for short-term emergencies. We will take responsibility for the care of our body, and our planet, with simple sustainable measures such as daily exercise, doing our best to stay cheerful, drinking mostly water and getting enough sleep. Cultivating wellness is exceptionally cost effective.
• Dr. Emily Kane has offered naturopathic health care to patients of all ages in Juneau since 1993.
