Healthcare vs Sickcare

You probably know how the current medical system works, but I will explain it very briefly just in case anyone has miraculously never had to visit the doctor, ER, or pharmacy before.  If by some small miracle that’s you, I want to hear from you!

Our current medical system is an insurance-based system which chooses what services are or are not covered by the insurance coverage you must carry.  When symptoms arise, you go the doctor who will likely recommend treatment to include an insurance covered remedy.  A remedy might include a pharmaceutical, physical therapy, or surgery.  What you pay for the remedy is dependent upon the type of insurance coverage you carry.  You might have to pay a lot for the doctor visit and treatment or you might only have to pay a little.  And what type of coverage you have is directly connected to whether you are paying a lot or a little for the insurance policy in the first place.

I would challenge this to be sickcare rather than healthcare.  Is this system caring for the healthy or is it caring for the sick?  Our system does have a few preventative health examinations covered by insurance, but compared to the amount of coverage for treatment for the sick, the preventative coverage is miniscule. 

Is your first thought this:  Why would there need to be care for healthy people if they are healthy in the first place?  Health doesn’t generally happen by chance.  There are several factors which contribute to a healthy lifestyle which include food/nutrition, water, genetics, and emotional regulation (or nervous system regulation).  Health relies upon a mind, body, and spirit approach.  How many of those things has your doctor addressed during your appointments?

I am the first person to say there is great value in our medical system as it exists today.  Technology has contributed largely to the trauma care available which is life saving.  But I also encounter far too many people who have the belief system and mindset that as you age your body must deteriorate and sickness is a part of that deterioration and it is inevitable.  This is where I see massive benefits to living a healthy lifestyle and having a true healthcare system.  Care of the healthy to remain healthy.  As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of care. 

A healthcare approach of this kind is not profitable so let’s follow the money and see who is benefiting from our medical system in the way it currently operates.  And how did our medical system get established anyway?

Prior to 1910 (there’s that date again), medicine was very much decentralized.  There were few standards placed on medicine or regulated educational requirements needed to heal the ill.  Medicine was natural, relying heavily on herbal treatments, ayurvedic practices, Hippocrates, and even traditional Chinese medicine.  Hippocrates was quoted, “Let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

In 1910, Rockefeller (there’s that name again) funded the Flexner Report which turned holistic, natural wellness into an education-based medicine system standardizing it with curriculum.  Rockefeller also had a heavy hand in the education system which we will discuss in the near future.  The Flexner Report was the first major wave of messaging to discredit natural remedies such as homeopathetic medicine, essential oils, plant medicine, and the like replacing them with pharmaceuticals. 

Have you taken pharmaceuticals which only ended up making you feel worse due to side effects or required additional medications to treat the side effect the first medication caused?  If you stopped taking the pharmaceutical were you healed, or were you told you would likely need to be on the medication for the rest of your life?  This is the difference between sickcare and healthcare. 

Natural modalities focus on balancing the body, restoring health, and preventing illness while pharmaceuticals treat you when you’re sick often leading to side effects which lead to more prescriptions.  But do the pharmaceuticals get to the root of the problem? 

I endured years of being sick with chronic bronchitis.  Each time I got sick, I would miss a couple weeks of work, usually end up at the doctor’s office twice before I’d recover and required somewhere between 3-6 prescriptions to get rid of the symptoms.  The most disappointing part after going through all of that?  The next time I was around someone with a simple cold, I would end up with bronchitis and repeat the same scenario over and over.  By the time I was 25, I was already tolerant to several antibiotics.  While the prescriptions got rid of the symptoms for the short term, they did nothing to heal my immune system to prevent me from getting bronchitis over and over again. 

Homeopathy, energy psychology, and functional medicine utilized nutrition, supplements, nervous system regulation, and emotional processing to heal the root cause of my bronchitis.  The last time I had bronchitis?  Fourteen years ago.  My bronchitis was not caused by an absence of pharmaceuticals.  Rather it improved with the use of natural and holistic methods.  And my story is just one of a thousand similar stories I’ve heard.

Why would Rockefeller want to convert people from believing in natural healing to a pharmaceutical based system?  Rockefeller owned oil fields and of course profited off of the use of fuels and oils.  The more systems he could establish with a dependence on oil-based products, the more profit he made.  We will get into energy and fuels in the future too.  Stay tuned…  By why is this is relevant to healthcare is because petroleum is widely used in the production of pharmaceuticals.  If you watch closely, you will even see an association between petroleum supply and health care prices.  Big pharma has grown into a trillion dollar industry.  That’s a lot of profit when your materials are being used for the manufacturing of such a large industry’s products.

With Rockefeller involved in the medical, educational, and energy systems, it’s understandable to see these systems interconnected in a way where they drive one another.  Media (all of those advertisements during commercial breaks on television) support the pharmaceutical industry, which is connected to doctors, nurses, physical therapists, etc who are dependent upon the education system to become licensed to practice medicine.  And as we just previously mentioned, the pharmaceutical industry is dependent upon oil.  All roads of profit lead back to Mr. Rockefeller.

Take a moment to look at the intention of both approaches to health:  one has a limited profit when you are well and one profits when you remain ill.  The holistic approach requires you to pay for your health out of pocket with few to no insurance policies covering natural healing methods, and the pharmaceutical system is largely incentivized for use by insurance coverage.  While insurance covered services are monetarily cheaper for you, it might be at the expense of long term wellness. 

I was annoyed and aggravated when I first began to pay for my holistic health practices insurance wouldn’t cover, pay more for non-processed foods, and purchase filtration for my water.  Eventually I came to understand investing in myself is the best investment I can ever make because everywhere I go, there I am.  As one of my colleagues frankly notes, “People will always be ABLE to AFFORD what they VALUE!”  Do you value you?  Do you value your health?  This was a powerful mindset shift I had to make in order for me to step out of my chronic bronchitis cycle.  And we will go deeper into what changes you can make to nutrition and water to support your wellness in the near future.

I believe one of the most empowering aspects of healthcare is being able to read your blood labs to know what nutrients your body needs to function optimally!  In fact, I am adamant this is the type of information which should be taught in physical education class rather than how to play Frisbee golf or make fun formations with a parachute.  Because I am so passionate about people’s health and wellness, I created a course where you can learn to read your own labs and know which nutrients your body needs based upon your lab results.  Or if you’d rather have your labs interpreted and a report and individualized plan created based upon your labs and symptoms, you can obtain that too.

I’ll be honest, I was skeptical about all of this at first, and it was desperation that led me to give something different a try.  I was so afraid of what age 35 would look like for me considering the number of medications I was tolerant of at the age of 25.  I’m so grateful to have better health in my 40s than I had in my 20s!  When something gets results you begin to see the truth, and once you see truth you can’t unsee it.

Lessons learned:  True healthcare is living a lifestyle which preserves health.
When you follow the money, you find our medical system was built upon profit rather than care of people.
Your true vote is the one you make with your dollar which includes how you care for your physical health.
Physical health is a deep form of personal freedom.

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Peace & Love,

Janessa