The Chinese word for crisis is comprised of two separate words, "danger" and "opportunity" -- and this describes the exact situation we face with the healthcare crisis in our country.
As a nation we are at the precipice of change for our healthcare system.
But if we make the wrong choices and simply provide universal coverage to an outdated 19th and 20th century model of medicine, this crisis will lead us into danger.
However, there are different choices we can make now that will lead to profound opportunity -- one that may provide real solutions to our healthcare crisis.
Today, I will outline a 9-point plan for real healthcare reform. This plan takes into account all of the changes we need to make -- including the fundamental shift in the type of medicine we practice -- if we are going to truly resolve the health catastrophe in this country.
Hope for a Brighter Future in Medicine
Despite the looming dangers we face as we work to change medicine, I have hope.
Over the last few months, I have been privileged to participate in events at the nexus of change that have all focused on fundamentally changing our disease-based healthcare system to one focused on creating health and wellness.
These ideas are not yet at the center of the healthcare debate, but they must be -- and they can be.
In February of this year, the Institute of Medicine held a Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public at the National Academy of Sciences. Six hundred key leaders and stakeholders in healthcare including educators, scientists, community leaders, practitioners, lawmakers, policy makers, and insurance leaders attended it.
It was a broad coalition that came together with a common purpose to change not only the way we practice medicine, but also the type of medicine we practice.
I believe the medicine at the core of healthcare reform must be founded on the clinical model and framework for practice developed by the Institute for Functional Medicine, a nonprofit organization of which I am a member. The Institute's mission is to support the widespread adoption of functional medicine.
This new way of thinking about health and disease is the biggest secret in healthcare today, yet it is the most effective model to address the current drivers of cost and chronic disease. To spread the word, the Institute recently published a detailed white paper called "21st Century Medicine: A New Model for Medical Education and Practice."
The same week the white paper was published, I testified on integrative and functional medicine before Senator Edward Kennedy's Senate working group on healthcare reform, alongside other leaders in healthcare including Drs. Dean Ornish, Mehmet Oz, and Andrew Weil. The full testimony is available from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, "Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation."
I also met with key policy makers in the White House. and was heartened by their openness and willingness to find a way to true healthcare reform.
More recently, at a retreat center on the edge of a Minnesota pond, I was privileged to be part of a think tank sponsored by the National Institutes of Health on "whole systems research."
It was an international gathering of systems biologists, mathematicians, physicists, geneticists, physiologists, psychologists, researchers, and doctors from a dozen countries and diverse backgrounds -- Palestinians and Jews, Chinese and Iraqis, French and Germans -- all exploring very important but neglected questions that hold the solution to our epidemic of chronic disease.
In this isolated place, the thinkers with their fingers on the pulse of the future all suddenly came to the same conclusion. The way we do research doesn't help us understand how things really work as a whole, integrated system.
In other words, the current model of studying one drug, chemical pathway, or gene for one disease doesn't give us useful answers to how we get sick and how we can get well.
What everyone at the conference understood at that moment is the same truth we need to come to as a nation ...
The old, conventional model of medicine and scientific research is simply outdated. It must give way to a new way of thinking about health and illness and a new method for medical practice.
A 9-Point Plan for Real Healthcare Reform
I believe that real healthcare reform is now possible because of a perfect storm where alignment of economic, scientific, and moral imperatives provides us an opportunity to do well as a nation by doing good, through fundamentally changing the kind of medicine we practice.
But to achieve that goal will require the collective imagination, intention, focus, and action of healthcare providers, consumers, industry, and policy makers.
A coordinated effort across government agencies and industry sectors focusing on health and wellness, incorporating what we already know, is urgently needed. We also need leadership at the highest levels of the White House to successfully create a culture of health and wellness and transform our healthcare system.
The 9-point plan below, while not at the center of the healthcare debate, is essential to create real change and avert disaster.
Just as horse-and-buggy makers gave way to the automobile, and 8-track tape manufacturers gave way to the iPod so must conventional medicine give way to a new way of practice.
Yes, some industries will fade, as funds are allocated toward policies and initiatives that prevent and treat chronic disease through dietary, lifestyle, and community interventions instead of expensive drugs and medical technologies. But other industries that promote health and wellness will flourish in their place.
These policies and initiatives are necessary for healthcare reform that addresses the true causes of our chronic disease epidemic and exploding costs. These are the changes that must be made if we are going to fix our broken healthcare system:
These changes won't take place overnight, and they won't be easy. But they can happen.
However, the only way they will happen is if the average person -- that means you -- gets involved and votes for change every day with your fork, with your feet, and with your voice.
We are facing a watershed moment in the history of medicine, one where changing the very way we understand and treat disease is finally possible.
But we all must work together to effect such a tremendous change in our medical system.
As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
We now have all the information we need to cure or dramatically improve chronic problems that are poorly addressed by conventional medicine and to discover vital, vibrant, good health at any age.
And we can finally transform our "sick care" system into a healthcare system that promises vibrant health and vitality to every man, woman, and child in this country.
The answer lies in functional medicine -- the future of medicine, available now.
Now I'd like to hear from you ...
What do you think of my 9 point plan?
Do you have any other suggestions?
How do you think functional medicine can help improve healthcare?
Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is the author of The UltraMind Solution. 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 HuffPostLiving on Twitter and become a fan of Huffington Post Living on Facebook*
Follow Mark Hyman, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markhymanmd
1) There are presently not enough doctors to go around and the ones on duty are terribly overworked. This should be remedied by dramatically increasing the enrollment of medical students now, get them in the pipeline to be taking care of patients ASAP. To do this requires Federal funding for expanding the facilities and faculty of medical schools across the country.
2) Eliminate the pressures on doctors to limit care based on expense and let them give patients the best care they know how, for it is false economy to provide substandard care for the sake of saving a little money.
Mandate that each state must implement a Universal Healthcare solution for its residents.
There are so many ideas out there.... let the states be the testing ground for what works.
Mass. already has a plan in place that is specific to its needs. I don't think the government can implement the same program in Alaska, as CA.
The demographics / issues are too diverse.
The feds should provide guidelines, but thats it.
What could be better but 50 different trials. Competition yes! We could then assess cost/benefit per state.
As a clinical health psychologist... I would also like to know what gives you the qualifications to be conducting what amounts to psychotherapy with patients... as evidenced by one of the scenarios described in your pdf?
Time and time again allopathic physicians have overstepped their professional boundaries and areas of specialization and it's high time that they step aside and stop pretending that they're the all-knowing gods of healing! You should also brush up on your history...
http://www.curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1440238#i
Nice, huh?
or just do as I did and copy and paste the link to the Health Reform dot gov web site:
http://www.healthreform.gov/
Share your stories and ideas, it takes an uprising from the masses in great number to be counted once.
Enough with should Senator Boxer be addressed as "ma'am" or "Senator" which got over seven hundred posts, yet this amazing article with easily implemented sustainable solutions for breathing hope into our failing health care system is not being debated or rated or sent as a link to the "share your stories and ideas" link on the home page...
http://www.healthreform.gov/
All those at the summit -exept for the practitioners- are the cause of high health care costs. One way or another WE fund scientific research, WE fund health insurances' profits, WE fund pharmaceutical research with astronomical costs of medicine, and yet no one representin US was there.
President Obama has said one thing that is probably the most valid in this argument: we have to reign in the legal costs (malpractice limits, firvolous lawsuits etc) ...He nailed it ! But grew many enemies in his party (most of them lawyers who paid a lot of money for his campaign)
Next he should have said : set limits on costs of medicine (an aspirine cannot cost $10.00) in a hospital, ....hey just an idea, I just paid $500.00 just to step into an emergency room with my son
Bottom line : live a healthier life and watever you do , don't get sick.
When I was living in England I saw bad things with universal health care, if you think this is bad wait till it kicks in . I hope we smarten up before that.
People will continue to get in wreaks, catch infections, fall and have other accidents, be victims of violence. None of the nine ideas address that.
Also you should all know that public, universal health coverage is the ONLY way to control future infectious epidemics. Know this, when I get swine or bird flu, I will NOT be going to a doctor or ER. I will be spreading it to you and yours though. Do you NOW care that I can't see a doctor?
Single-Payer is the only option, everything else is a bunch of distraction from the essentials in favor of anything BUT patients.
I have little doubt that in general you are heading in the right direction and trying to do some positive things. However, either you or those who are running the ship, are taking some very dangerous leaps. For example, today your company (but with your name prominently on the e-mail) sent me an endorsement of something called caveman exercising and when I linked to the endorsement product, it not only says you can and should do what it says, but totally disses "normal" cardiovascular exercising as wrongheaded and potentially very detrimental.
I have been a consumer lawyer for 25 years. I've seen these types of happenings before, where a renowned of wannabe 'renowned' doctor/author (even lawyer) get carried away with themselves and send their name all over the place. Dr. Phil endorsed a line of vitamins and supplements which he nad no idea about and which eventually got him in a bunch of trouble.
i am urging you to check it out and stay on top of your company and your people. Read this caveman crappola that you're endorsing. Words matter to some extent, but what you actually do matters alot more.
Now that you're really putting yourself out there, including PBS, you need to be careful not just for yourself, but for the large numbers of people you hope to influence.
This could be said of any problem that our society faces, and has been said before. It's a nice sentiment, but will remain so.
As always, we will be measured and, in this, found lacking.
Best of luck though!
All I can say is, if Obama doesn't get a good health care reform bill through, we may as well have voted for McSame.
These "holistic" providers charge so much money and most don't take any form of insurance.
Using the principles of a holistic approach is all fine and dandy but if it is to benefit mant people besides the wealthy, it needs to be covered by
Medicare. Those doctors who practice such medicine need to begin excepting Medicare.
We need to expand Medicare to all--oe we have no solution.
When I began to get sick, mainstream doctors failed to diagnose me so I tried some of these "alternative" practioners. They took my money and never made me well as they didn't test me for the underlying cause of my sickness. These alternative docs along with my insurance company premiums have taken my money and left me sick.
The best type of doctor I found is one who is mainstream yet think outside the box and test in order to find the bottom line--and who will except health insurance.
I think your ideas are great, but are you going to accept Medicare or a public health care option if we should obtain one?