{"id":44216,"date":"2021-09-28T03:45:32","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T10:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=44216"},"modified":"2021-09-28T15:50:14","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T22:50:14","slug":"our-job-part-ii-b-cracks-and-opportunities-in-the-medical-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/28\/our-job-part-ii-b-cracks-and-opportunities-in-the-medical-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Our job, part II-b: Cracks and opportunities in the medical system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: I would be very glad to have experienced health-care workers jump into comments with any additions, corrections (however savage), reality checks, bright ideas, personal insights, or other forms of enlightenment.<\/em><\/p>\n

—–
\nOne thing about the hardest systems to route around: Being HARD, lacking flexibility, they develop a lot of cracks.<\/p>\n

Take a look at any heavily institutionalized or subsidized medical system. I\u2019ll use the U.S. system because the U.S. is home-not-so-sweet-home. But despite the claims that various socialized systems (e.g. Canada\u2019s and the UK\u2019s) are inherently better, many of the same or equally awful drawbacks apply to them.<\/p>\n

We glance at our medical system and we see: institutional and bureaucratic coldness; incomprehensible billing; insane costs; opacity; ghastly amounts of malpractice; treatments that seem healthier for doctors\u2019 pockets than for us; rushed and impersonal appointments; ignorance of nutrition; emphasis on sickness rather than maintaining health; doctors who sneer at us if we want a voice in managing our own care; data gathering; in short a system where the patient\u2019s needs seem to come last. And now this already broken system has gone to a centralized command-and-control model (run by bureaucrats who haven\u2019t tended patients in decades, if ever) and is either trying to force experimental vaccines on the unwilling, refuse services to the unvaccinated, or get rid of up to 1\/3 of its own workforce in the cause of a global moral panic.<\/p>\n

Wow. That\u2019s bad. And it\u2019s all true. To be fair, we also have to credit the system for huge advances in pharmacology, medical technology, surgical techniques, and much more. No doubt about it, modern medicine has produced lifesaving and life-enhancing wonders. But we wonder why such astounding advances have to come at such a human cost.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

That negative description above is only what the medical system looks like to our jaundiced eyes. It’s really just one aspect<\/em> of a more vast and varied realm.<\/p>\n

Come closer. See the cracks in what looks like an immovable monolith.<\/p>\n

How many of you, without setting foot in a hospital or clinic, without seeing an M.D. or a nurse practitioner: take herbal supplements (in an industry survey, 77% report they do<\/a>, and even the National Center for Health Statistics says 57.6% do<\/a>); do bodywork; have hypnosis sessions; use biofeedback; practice tai chi; get chiropractic care; see an accupuncturist; explore traditional Chinese medicine; follow a diet customized to your specific health needs; utilize a float tank; use a TENS stimulator; get massages; perform homegrown physical therapy routines; meditate; or conduct any other type of body or body-mind-spirit practice for your own health and well-being?<\/p>\n

A lot of you. In growing numbers. <\/p>\n

These are cracks in the system. Ask yourself: how do we widen them to let in more freedom, more choice, greater possibilities of new discoveries in treatment and health maintenance?<\/p>\n

How many of you (before COVID travel restrictions, alas) either took a trip for medical tourism or considered doing so \u2013 that is, going to Mexico or Panama or India or Thailand or elsewhere to have medical care from skilled (and frequently U.S.-trained) doctors at a fraction of the price for the same procedures here?<\/p>\n

Cracks in the system. How do we widen them?<\/p>\n

How many of you have ever ordered prescription drugs \u2013 with our without a prescription \u2013 from offshore pharmacies?<\/p>\n

Cracks in the system. How do we widen them?<\/p>\n

Ever arranged your own blood draw and customized testing to monitor your own health at one of the growing number of independent labs?<\/p>\n

Cracks in the system. How do we widen them?<\/p>\n

How many of you have ever received some type of ad hoc medical service from a friend who is a nurse, a veterinarian, a retired doctor, or a medical student? How many of you have bartered for such services or gotten them free out of friendship or for past favors granted?<\/p>\n

Cracks in the system. How do we widen them?<\/p>\n

Ever hear about anybody who got a 3D-printed prosthetic for a few hundred dollars or for free rather than having to have one prescribed and pay phenomenal big bucks for it?<\/p>\n

Cracks in the system. How do we widen them?<\/p>\n

Already, just going by what we already have available to us — legally, quasi-legally, or illegally \u2013 we personally experience a health care system that is far less monolithic than we imagine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d someone objects, \u201cBut your accupuncturist can\u2019t remove your spleen and your neighborhood nurse can\u2019t irradiate your tumor and an ambulance shouldn\u2019t rush you from the site of a car accident to your friendly local veterinarian.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s true, too. There will always be a need for seriously interventionary care and emergency care, and and bless it, that happens to be what our present medical system is actually very good at. Now, if it were tamed, if it were recognized as merely one useful, but not all-encompassing, part of a varied and complementary health care realm, how much the better. If the medical system as a whole allowed for more individual freedom and choice — with less cosmically terrible and unpredictable costs — well, we’d really have something.<\/p>\n

And in realizing that we need to route around a system that is so clearly broken (even as it remains tremendously useful), we freedomistas have a chance to help create that more varied and more customer-friendly realm.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we have the ability to diminish the old system\u2019s importance (and even perhaps some of its arrogance) by taking much of our everyday health management and a considerable bit of our treatment of common problems outside of it.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

Besides, the biggest cracks in the system are still ahead of us.<\/p>\n

Not very far ahead of us, it appears.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going to happen when already burnt-out doctors and nurses drop out (or get kicked out) even faster when forced to take experimental treatments as a condition of working in large facilities?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re likely to see more concierge practices (patient paid and patient centered), more small (even part-time) practices going against the trend of large corporations centralizing everything, more care offered at market prices by practitioners avoiding the entanglements of insurance. Watch for potentially more creative developments, more blurring of lines between what used to be called \u201calternative\u201d medicine and \u201cconventional\u201d medicine. (Listen for the terms functional, integrative, complementary, or holistic.)<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll likely see more surgical centers independent of conventional hospitals. More doc-in-the-boxes with more sophisticated diagnostic and treatment equipment. More MRIs and CT scans offered for a few hundred dollars, prices openly posted, rather than unknown thousands. <\/p>\n

And all this simply with available resources \u2013 and lots of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and other professionals dropping or being kicked out, then dropping in to make it all happen.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, what are some of our most urgent needs as we consider how to create alternative health systems?<\/p>\n