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Our health care paradigm needs to transform and expand. This means that in addition to focusing on immediate treatment and reimbursement for procedures and medicines that give so-called cures and alleviation of symptoms, our system needs an overhaul that will allow ancient principles of health, healing, medicine and spirituality to also be valued and of course be reimbursed.
Today's Western health care is dominated by powerful financial forces through insurance companies that delegate and decide what is "medically necessary" so that payment and reimbursement can occur for the health care provider, the hospital, lab, clinic and of course what the patient ends up paying or not. It is a vastly complicated system that is not uniform, that bends the rules and often is blurry as to who really keeps the dollars behind the scenes while supposedly coverage occurs for medical problems. Often patients are left with multiple choices within one health care plan that are often confusing and have "fine print" and many details that are really hard to keep up with. Often the amount the patient owes is misleading because they are already paying costly monthly premiums or it is deducted from a paycheck. However, if a serious illness occurs the co-pay can be so costly that the person or family are financially devastated anyway despite paying into the insurance premium over many months to years.
Health care payments are dominated by immediate results from treatments, procedures and medical literature that supposedly sometimes backs up the treatment. Technical and surgical procedures are reimbursed more often because it fits the old "fix it" model for a fee. Medical interventions are paid for in similar ways when it fits conventional research and models that show some form of tangible result.
There is no question that Western medicine has excelled in the field of surgery, diagnostics, infectious disease, emergency procedures, and various medications and other technologies designed to find out where and what the problem is and then to suppress and arrest symptoms and issues that arise with the disease.
However, this is only one aspect of health care.
There are other vast aspects of health care that the current model does not fully address. Dealing with the alleviation of chronic problems that have no one cure, the valuing of emotional and spiritual healing, and the issues surrounding nutrition, supplementation, detoxification and principles of natural cure is not part of general reimbursement nor conventional education and practice.
The subject of complementary and alternative medicine is quite vast.
In a nutshell, 21st century healthcare needs to broadly accommodate many methods that include herbal medicine, energy healing medicine, manual body therapies (that include Yoga -type and other similar postures and practices) detoxification, and many types of psychotherapy that can bridge the issues of mind, body, the emotions and the Spirit.
The problem is cost, the time it takes to treat, lack of models designed to help with such issues, and lack of real financial investment to make such treatments a practical reality. Some programs are starting but they are fledglings trying to take to their wings.
The main thing I feel is that we must start moving away solely from dependence on insurance. Corporations with vision, innovation, insight, and enlightenment need to pool their sources together to study and realize the vast wisdom that Naturopathic Medicine, Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine hold. Energy healing Medicine and many modalities are also vital along with many other areas.
Just like corporations are pooling their resources to help feed the world, resources of dollars need to be gathered to help alleviate the chronicity of many diseases such as diabetes, obesity, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, hypertension, many forms of heart disease and so on. This has to take the form of research, creation of facilities, marketing and so many other factors needed to bring a greater message across in the health care field.
Yes, alternative and complimentary methods are coming more and more to the forefront. However, there are few large comprehensive centers that deal with these areas. Many individual practitioners are providing services often with challenging financial reimbursement issues. And, many services are offered piecemeal: acupuncture in one clinic, herbology in another and so on. We need services under one roof or a network of comprehensive services that make sense where practitioners are communicating with each other and with conventional practitioners that understand complementary principles and are accessible to patients and providers..
Many patients also buy thousands of dollars of supplements each month and yet do not want to pay the regular fees needed to physicians and others to monitor and to help deal with issues that arise.
At the helm of these endeavors, physicians and healers who have the background and knowledge must come forward with their knowledge base in a broader way than ever before to help unlock and reveal the mysteries of ancient health and healing. Such methods go to the root of the problem within the body and mind, something that Western Medicine does not have as much insight about. New models are needed ---where people learn, receive treatment in an ongoing way, and practice methods on their ownto have any real effect. To my knowledge there is no established comprehensive, accredited hospital just yet that is completely based in Naturopathic, Ayurvedic, and Chinese Medicine principles in America so far, for example as they have in India and China and the Far East.
In essence, we need to bring to the forefront that enlightenment is one of the basic tenets of health care and that the practice through Yoga type methods is key for real health and healing to take place on a more permanent level.
Patients must learn that insurance is not to be totally depended upon. Savings accounts, health memberships and other ideas have to begin to offset the cost of what insurance companies will not pay. We need to value the time, energy, focus, loving attention and so on---all the intangibles that also comprise the feeling of healthy well being in addition to just paying for procedures and medical interventions that only suppress symptoms.
And so, the evolution in health care may not necessarily only lie in creating more drugs, treatments, diagnostics and so on --although these are important, but retrospectively studying and applying ancient principles that bring about alleviation of chronic disease at its root through the power of many forces including nurturance, love, compassionate understanding, enhancing patient well being, and teaching the principles of enlightenment that can foster remembrance and experience of what real health and healing is.
Dr. Rama
Dallas Texas
more later.
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