Control

If you turn on the news, you will hear all about the latest health care reform ideas. You will hear how badly we need change. I agree. But what I don’t agree with is where we are placing the highest priorities. I see people getting worked up over prescription costs and network regulations. I also see people calling for the heads of insurance companies, claiming that they are evil and out to get us. I’m not trying to start a public vs. private debate, so that is all I will say about either side. It doesn't have to be a complicated debate though. In fact, we are wasting a lot of time and energy.

You can change the health care system any way you want to, but with our current lifestyles, it won’t make a difference. There is only one thing that will “fix” our current situation. That one thing is control. The good (or bad) thing is that we already have control. We have control over our own health regardless of the system operating around us. The health care system is there to treat illness, injury and other disease. What if we could prevent some of these things? Wouldn’t that be a good system? Well, we can and the current system, even if we don’t change a single thing, will function well if we start using our control. We just need to use our control.

No matter what side of the debate you are on, you can see where I’m coming from, right? Think about it: instead of going down to the town hall meeting to complain about what they might take away or how change may or may not affect you, what if you took control of your health? What if you spent as much time taking care of yourself as you did worrying about how much reform will cost?

The fact is: No one in government, no one in insurance, not even anyone in the medical field can give you any more control over your health. They can regulate what types of treatments you receive, provide the payment for such treatments and even operate on you to battle certain ailments. But the bottom line is, they are only able to treat symptoms that you present to them. 75% of the symptoms we present to them are preventable, meaning we shouldn’t need 75% of what we are being treated for. What’s worse is that we still aren’t solving the problems now. We are just treating symptoms. What kind of control is that?

In other words, for the past few decades, we have been throwing ourselves at the mercy of modern medicine and begging it to keep us going. We have refused to take responsibility for our own health and now we are blaming the very system that has kept us alive for being the problem. We have run up a huge bill for services that we have depended upon, but now we don’t want to pay for it.

Control: You have it, I have it and actually we all have the control. Let’s use it and truly solve this problem rather than looking for more ways to treat the symptoms. Health insurance is expensive because health care is expensive. If we are in control, we will prevent the problems that are costing us so much money. Wouldn’t that solve our health care problems? That sounds like a good solution to me.