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Friday, September 11, 2009

Change your behavior and see REAL health care reform

There is nothing that the president or congress can do to improve health care if we don't change our behavior when it comes to making better food choices and being more physically active. Presently we are a nation of intervention after falling ill and treating diseases rather than a nation of prevention and counseling people (actually sitting down and talking to them about better food choices and better physical activity as opposed to more expensive drugs and more expensive surgeries).

Pharmaceuticals and health care is profit driven which creates a backwards system of reimbursement. There is no reimbursement for doctors to sit down with their patients and talking to them about behavior change that can prevent future problems, or if a problem already exists, to reverse that problem when possible without the use of expensive drugs and or surgeries in an industry (pharmaceutical industry) that has the largest pricing markup out of any other industry in our market place. That is our national shame right now. The pharmaceutical industry and health care industry, an industry with the important task at making us healthy, has the largest pricing markup out of any other industry in the United States market place. Health care, the care for peoples health, should not be the worlds largest profit center. It has national disgrace written all over it.

The health care reform that is being introduced to Congress right now by the white house is designed to make health insurance more affordable and accessible to everyone regardless of their circumstances. Making health care more accessible in itself is a great idea if it's coupled with an even larger focus on educating people about the importance of behavioral changes for prevention and healthier living otherwise the white houses plan for reform is a recipe to exacerbate the problem as well as the national debt. If the main focus does not shift to changing the behavior of people then unfortunately increasing access to health insurance coverage to more people without changing their behaviors about there lifestyles is simply not financially sustainable insurance legislation. The only way to make it sustainable, temporarily, would be for the federal government to pump more money into it and driving up the federal debt. so high that nations stop borrowing money to us out of fear that we will never have the means to pay them back. At that point, our economy collapses and no one has any health insurance, we will still be sick, and we will be out of work.

We need health care reform coupled with behavioral change initiative or health care reform will only deepen the systemic problem and create new problems. Right now the common practice in health care are only VERY expensive intervention treatments that fuel the worlds largest profit centers that only a very small select few individuals collect those profits from (billions of our dollars, yours and mine) and those select few people do not want to see any kind of health care reform or they may stop receiving billions of our money both yours and mine. That one fact alone should make your blood boil and insist on reform coupled with a larger focus on a behavioral change initiative so that reform will mean something very significantly positive to all of us.

Tom
Passion Fitness

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