I appeared on Larry King Live Wednesday night to discuss health care reform with a panel of respected, high-profile physicians. I sounded the themes I wrote about in The Wrong Diagnosis: that Americans must change the content of health care, not just access to it, or we'll remain among the unhealthiest people in the developed world, and the costs will sink us.
Bill Frist, a physician and former Senate Republican majority leader from Tennessee, responded with what has become the conservative line: that "we do have the best health care" and what Americans principally need is "insurance reform" rather than improved health care practices. Later in the program were video clips of what host Wolf Blitzer termed "conservatives" disrupting town hall meetings on health care reform. Clearly, the prospect of change in health care is highly emotional and disturbs many people.
But here's my question: Since when is it conservative to embrace new, overpriced, corrupt systems, like the health-destroying and ruinously expensive protocols of much of modern medicine? "Conservative" has several meanings, but two central ones are "favoring traditional views and values," and "avoiding excess."
I hold that nothing could be more wild, unconstrained, and downright liberal than the path medicine has taken in just the last 20 years -- an unprecedented bacchanalia of excess and contempt for traditional American values.
Pharmaceuticals, once just one of many therapeutic modalities, are now synonymous with medical care; more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines for chronic health problems. Medical journals, formerly bastions of objectivity, are today often ghostwritten shills for moneyed interests. And physicians, once free to make healing their only goal, must now obey the dictates of lawyers and stockholders by ordering endless tests and dangerous, dubious surgeries for even minor conditions.
While billions of dollars are shunted into very few pockets via such abuses, insurance premiums skyrocket, leaving 47 million Americans with no coverage. The result of medicine's libertine spree? The relief agency Remote Area Medical, established to bring health care to rural parts of third-world nations, now sends 60 percent of its missions to U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, California and Knoxville, Tennessee.
By contrast, integrative medicine (IM), the system we teach at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson (and that is taught at more than 40 other medical schools nationwide including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic) is profoundly conservative in at least three ways:
1. It is philosophically conservative in that it aims to restore core values of medicine that were strong in the past, such as a reverence for the healing power of nature and the importance of the therapist-patient relationship.
2. It is medically conservative in stressing prevention and advocating lesser rather than greater intervention -- the least invasive, least harmful, least expensive treatments that the circumstances of illness demand. IM practitioners always observe the Hippocratic precept of "First, do no harm," relying in simpler interventions whenever possible and turning to more drastic ones only when the former fail to produce desired outcomes.
3. It is fiscally conservative in its willingness to look beyond the blinders of high-tech medicine to identify inexpensive therapies that may be useful and in its insistence that they be held to the same standard for clinical- and cost-effectiveness in well-designed outcomes trials.
I urge Senator Frist and all Americans to join me and thousands of physicians and patients in demanding a return to sensible, sustainable, conservative values in medicine. The liberals have had their day.
Andrew Weil, MD, is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com. Follow Dr. Weil on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook.
Follow Dr. Andrew Weil on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrWeil
However, it will not help me if I have the BRCA gene, or if I have trauma from accident, or live a really bad lifestyle. For those things you need GOOD medical care, or you die. Should we allow fat people or junkies to have medical care? Yes, and more importantly we need them to have mental health care.
We should have a national single payer plan, whether socialized medicine (MD's are gov't employees) or health insurance for all, where cost is paid by employers, or funded on a pro rata basis.
The rich pay less tax now than 25 years ago. Don't believe me? Ask Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. It's time the rich stopped having their bills paid by the poor, and kicked in their share. It's long overdue.
http://piratenews.org/billfrist.html
Of course they love the sick system as it is. They've been able to suck billions of bucks out of it right into their pockets!
People who consider themselves liberals— whether social or political— are frequently every bit as committed to non-pharmaceutical, non-surgical health modalities, if not more so, than many who consider themselves true conservatives.
Many liberal-minded people who cannot afford the luxury of expensive insurance policies or drug remedies work very hard— every single day— at maintaining or repairing their own health, using exactly the types of alternative modalities mentioned in this article.
Just for fun, here are some classic dictionary definitions of liberal: open to new behavior or opinions, favorable or respectful of individual rights and freedoms. Some dictionary synonyms for liberal: tolerant, unprejudiced, unbigoted, broad-minded, open-minded, enlightened.
These are not bad characteristics to bring to an important public debate like this.
At 56, I feel healthy, my weight is at a good level, and my heart rate is under 60. And you know, I still visit my MD when I have a pain come up, to be sure all is OK. But we need a system that rewards preventive health care and that rewards discussion time. Currently procedures (lab tests etc) are rewarded well but doctor/patient discussion is not. For-profit insurance companies, based on my actual experience, are often fraudulent. I strongly hope we can take the step of establishing a public option.
The government is full of qualified people for healthcare. Will profit-centered insurance companies take better care of the public than the government? My answer is that government is better than private industry for the public well-being. This does not necessarily mean to eliminate private opportunities, but they must be kept in check. When balance is restored, we can make needed adjustments to get the best possible healthcare system for the USA. But the first step is to break the stranglehold of the insurance industry on healthcare.
At various points throughout her history, the country has experienced periods of social upheavals, just like we are seeing today. Whether it was the fight to abolish slavery in the 1800s; the push for greater womens rights at the turn of the 20th century; the civil rights movement of the 1960s; or even the most recent choice whether to break the shackles of tradition and elect her first African-American President -- more often than not, America has always chosen progressive change over an entrenched status-quo.
That is why I've always held that the detractors of Health Care Reform are fighting a loosing battle. It is true that people are nervous. It is true that some are confused. However, one should never underestimate the ability of this country to embrace change.
If we were to have universal public health care, Mr Weil would get out of business. A efficient, user friendly, free (tax based) health care system would remove every incentives to anyone to use his `specialized` services.
Dr Weil has every reason for not wanting a strong public system to work.
Going to give you health and wellness information? Um, no. Going to tell you how you can live a nutritionally sound lifestyle, and give you options.. Um no. They just will write you a Rx so they get a kickback from the Pharma companies for being a good drug pusher. That's about it. It's SO frustrating trying to get this message across to you who are just obsessed about getting a Doctor card. It's like you can't see the light with your blinders on. Health Care reform is so much more then having higher taxes so you can all go see a doctor.. There's so much more. Even Today, Obama said it's just a sliver of the pie.
Also about the 'sliver of the pie' that you quoted from Obama was not said today or Tuesday. You've got to keep up with what going on and stop watching Fox. Fox make you sound like a ph00L.
His point is that the current medical system in the U.S. in not at all conservative but radical, the current system does not protect families, our society, nor foments stability wich are all - so called - conservative values.
It would behoove anyone who wishes to make a comment on a piece to read the whole thing beyond the headline, this is just plain ol´ common sense.
If you support reform, check out this site for arguments in favor of meaningful reform (with a way to pay for it!) Matter of fact, spread the word if you can.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=d946wsj_63gngn8zcj
Also, there is little financial incentive for private insurance companies to cover preventative care, because the payoff is so far down the road that the individuals are likely to be with a different company by the time the prevention really reaps rewards.