The health care reform bill has passed and many people will be celebrating that, finally, the United States will work to assure every citizen health insurance that cannot be canceled because you change your job, because you get sick, or for any other reason.
Remember this is just a start to the transformation of health care. While all of the things I worked for with my colleagues, Drs. Dean Ornish and Michael Roizen, on Capitol Hill the last year did not make it into the final bill, a few important things did and we can build on that. In fact, in my last meeting with Senator Harkin in December, he assured me that the passage of this bill would be just the beginning of reform and that after it passed we could move on to health care reform 2.0 that addresses more of the underlying issues about not only who is covered but what
is covered.
Those of us who believe in preventive health care, integrated health care, functional medicine, and complementary and alternative medicine have special reasons to celebrate. This bill has provisions that explicitly support these approaches to health care. One of these is the creation of a National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council, which I testified about before the Senate last February.
Today I want to introduce you to your new best friend, a friend who has been working on your behalf for years without your knowing it, a friend who had a huge role in seeing to it that this health care reform bill addresses preventive and integrative care.
The Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC) was created in 2002 and has been quietly working on Capitol Hill to bring about the kinds of changes in health care that we all want. Last month, I was in New York presenting at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium and I was on a panel with IHPC's executive director, Dr. Janet Kahn. When I heard her describe what IHPC has been doing about health care reform and the things that are lying quietly in this bill, I got very excited about their work and what is to come in 2010.
Dr. Kahn explained 3 major aspects of this bill that IHPC helped shape:
1. Due to Kahn's work with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the definition of the health care workforce was amended so that it now officially includes, "licensed complementary and alternative medicine providers and integrative health care practitioners."
2. IHPC was a collaborator on the creation of the Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN), a document that prompted the inclusion of the National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council that I mentioned above. Truly remarkable.
3. And third, IHPC worked hard to have the Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research in the bill. This will allow functional medicine approaches to be evaluated toe to toe with conventional medicine.
And there will be more. As Kahn so clearly told the audience in New York, this health care reform bill is just the beginning. It contains toeholds from which we climb toward what we really want - a nation that really understands how to help people live healthy lives and that supports the availability of many different pathways to healing.
I often say that I practice functional medicine because it tackles and fixes the underlying causes of health problems and doesn't paper over the symptoms as so much of conventional medicine does. That is exactly IHPC's approach to health care reform. IHPC is about reforming the very architecture of American health care.
I encourage you to join the IHPC Online Action Network as I have done. Help move this work forward. By joining the Network you will receive updates and insider information about how IHPC is continuing this commitment to true health care reform; you will receive opportunities to communicate directly with Congress and the Obama administration; and you will be able to provide critical feedback on strategy, priorities, and the direction of this work. And most importantly, IHPC will be working every day on behalf of you, me, and all of us who believe in functional medicine, preventive medicine, and integrated health care.
Take action now and join the Network.
Be happy, be healthy!
Mark Hyman, M.D.
PS- IHPC has done amazing work in 2009. Support the work ahead with a donation today.
Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.
Follow Mark Hyman, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markhymanmd
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I prefer the natural remedy.
Think what you must re: astrology, go to www.beliefisnotrequired.com for an education of its value.
My point is that I see hundreds of people each year who fear changes jobs or career because of their health 'benefits'. After making a somewhat comfortable living for the last 14 years, I can tell you that the world is slowly moving in my direction, our direction.
I gave up a career as a lawyer to do the work I'm doing. I know there are more people who once they are not shackled to their 'jobs' will take the leap to greater fulfillment.
It was inspiring to heard Speaker Pelosi over the past several weeks speak to increased entreprenuership because of HCR.
BTW, my BC/BS premiums have doubled over the past 10 years.
Many people don't know what these are, or how many people find them helpful. Compounding pharmacies are those drugstores that still actually *make* prescriptions up, rather than just "filling" them by counting out capsulres or tablets or measuring liquid from bigger bottles into smaller ones.
Why are these important? Well, the big pharma companies don't always cover everything. For example, I get a recurrent weird nose infection, related to an on-going condition. There's a drug that knocks it out, but it's normally available only in tablet form, for a slightly different use. Our compounding pharmacy takes the actual drug, without the fillers used to produce the tablets, and mixes it with some type of liquid (saline??) so that I can squirt it up my nostrils.
The tablets wouldn't do the job for me, so why should Big Pharma get upset by this? But they do. They've been trying to eliminate compounding pharmacies for some time. Other people who use compounding pharmacies are often pet owners: not all medicines that will work in animals are available from vet supply houses. Some vets will write scripts for HUMAN medications that can be compounded into forms that can be administered to pets.
So I hope you do support them.
Insurance and health-delivery corporations should operate within 10-15% of revenue.
Insurance companies should lay-off most of their actuaries; whose job is to assess the individual's risk based on their prior health and deny coverage.
Insurance and/or Providers should hire social workers and nurses spread across towns and cities to help manage patients with chronic illness; which account for 70% of healthcare costs and leads to 75% of all deaths.
Such allocation of resources provides better care to patients, at a lower costs. It reduces cost of acute (a.k.a high cost) care in hospitals and nursing homes as many patients, with chronic illnesses, keep getting re-admitted due to poor home-care. Such a system also impacts on the 30% of healthcare cost delivered in the last few months of life; and will eliminate use of hospitals' ER as first-line of care.
Using best practice patterns, providers should eliminate the 40% over-treatment, under-treatment and in-appropriate treatment. Stick to enforce this is to refuse reimbursement for such care and to publicize physician- and hospital-specific data on practice patterns compared to peers across the country.
America has to think 'out of the box'. Northeast states with the highest costs should get to work post-haste and practice what they publish about cost containment.
• Accept no Medicare or Medicaid benefits. (Back to a time when 35 percent of seniors lived below poverty level.)
• Accept no Social Security.
• Decry undeclared wars. (And bring soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan.)
• Do not drive on interstate highways
I have plenty more ideas for the whining Republicans but this is a start. Good luck. :-)
I have plenty more ideas for the whining Republicans but this is a start. Good luck. :-)"
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Excellent point(s). Let's tell the Republicans and Tea Partiers that all of these benefits are o-p-t-i-o-n-a-l. They are not forced to use any of them. Since they're so opposed to sharing resources, how about we make it especially hard on them and suggest they give up electricity and telephone service.
Dena
www.onevoicerising.com
Medicine must adhere to good science. Prevention does not equal supplements and kooky diets. Prevention is about good habits: not smoking, not drinking much, maintaining a healthy weight, exercise, immunizations, good hygiene (washing hands) and access to health care to check your status and catch problems early.
Any "alternative" or "integrative" remedy or treatment found to be effective (by proper scientific, peer-reviewed studies) becomes part of medicine. Prevention is every primary care provider's goal; it's not his or her fault that people do not listen or take the advice.
There's enough blame to go around.
Unfortunately, the AMA is attacking the "scope of practice" of these professionals, is monopolizing healthcare and keeping costs high.
Oriental medicine practitioners in particular hold many answers to our primary care dilemma in that wellness, prevention, diet, exercise, etc. are all central to their practice. But the AMA continues efforts to drive out non-MD practitioners.
NYT reported a medical student overjoyed on acceptance to a new medical schools and he declared that, economically, he was now "set for life." The school supposedly specializes in prevention and wellness. So physicians historically trained in the disease model are now going to be the gatekeepers for wellness?
The AMA drives practitioners who are better trained in their areas of expertise out of the market, restricts trade and then expects the insurance companies to pay physicians higher rates for the same services. Our system needs to push back on the AMA and keep many aspects of primary care, prevention, and wellness in the hands of allied health professionals who are better trained in their areas of expertise and do not expect to be "set for life" while charging reasonable fees for care...
Most doctors bill less per hour than a plumber, and definitely less than a lawyer.
This is encouraging- Good job Bernie Saunders!!
Just a few suggestions:
1) Government needs to crack down on mislabeled food.
2) We need to stop government undermining the public health.
Our huge subsidies for corn only subsidize fast-food and a meat oriented diet.
3) We need new regulation of TV advertising. Only the US and New Zealand allow prescription drug ads on TV. Do ads for alcohol contribute to public health?
Thanks for a great article