I try not to bring work to my blog, as it were, to spare you nice people from my healthcare nerddom. But I ran across this article in the regular course of my duties today and found it an intriguing commentary on how interest groups have in many ways hijacked the natural process of aging and the second law of thermodynamics and turned them into causes and industries fueled by human fear. While this is written from a very secular perspective, it is not unlike a Christian critique of materialism where our bodies and physical health are concerned.
From a policy standpoint, I can certainly see that engendering medical fears, as this article describes, has contributed a great deal to overutilization and ergo the cost of medicine overall. Not to say prevention isn’t important – it is – but when you have a society of hypochondriacs, of course it’s going to be harder for those who actually need to see a doctor to get in the door.
I was convicted on this point recently by my Mom, who mentioned in passing some aches associated with arthritis. In retrospect, I surprised myself with the first words that came out of my mouth: “they have good medications for that now. You should see a doctor.” (From me, who won’t go to a doctor unless dragged kicking and/or screaming.) In her usual grace-filled way, Mom dismissed the pain as not that bad, and she would rather wait until there was a real need to treat the pain – after all, she reminded me, it’s just a part of getting older.
It’s hard to remember that reality when I’m bombarded on a daily basis by groups who make a living off those who would avoid physical pain at all costs because they don’t realize there are far greater things to be concerned about in life. But the common wisdom in this nation says that so long as you have a cause – any cause at all – your life means something. Like the slum children C.S. Lewis describes as contenting themselves with making mud pies because they cannot conceive of what is meant by an offer of a holiday by the sea, we create missions and tell ourselves they’re meaningful. We busy ourselves because we’re afraid of the eternal questions that will echo in our souls if we were to stand still for a moment. But we are not the final arbiters of meaning. What matters will become abundantly clear when our work is tested by fire. I think we’ll be surprised by how much of our labors disappear as a vapor.
Lord, give us strength and courage to engage in work that will last…
1 comment:
Interesting article, Leeann. I think it's very true that we're "sold" a lot of drugs whose benefits are questionable in the name of fear.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure that we have a "nation of hypochondriacs." I know far more people who ought to see a doctor but who are convinced nothing is wrong with them, than I do people who run to the doctor for things that aren't a big deal. I myself waited four years too long to see a doctor for my symptoms, and I'm pretty sure I would have been a lot better off if I'd been more proactive early on.
I think it's more likely that we have a nation of doctors who THINK that we are all hypochondriacs, and give us drugs to shut us up, drugs that in many cases are no better than a placebo, rather than finding root causes and truly dealing with health crises and preventing later ones.
I now know that a lot of what people consider "necessary" parts of aging are, actually, totally preventable...and while it may cost more in the short term, long term care costs would be significantly reduced if these diseases and conditions were prevented.
I think a much bigger problem in healthcare is illustrated by a test one doctor had run for me last year. He told me first to check with my insurance to see if they would cover it. You see, if insurance covered it, the lab would charge them $950 for the test. If insurance didn't, they would charge me just $300. Hmmm. That's pretty shady. :-P Incidentally, insurance didn't cover it and I paid out of pocket, and quite frankly, I was GLAD to do so knowing that inflated costs like that are part of the health care crisis.
Additionally, I have to beg to differ about how there are "far greater things to be concerned about in life" than pain. That may be true, for some people, in cases of small aches and pains that aren't a big deal. But in the case of the fibromyalgia sufferer who can't stand up at the stove long enough to make dinner for her young family because it hurts too much? Meaning that transcends pain is a difficult thing to bring up to the same fibromyalgia sufferer who is in the kind of pain you *can't* transcend, that the doctor tells her is "all in her head" because he can't find a drug to fix it or a lab test to confirm that it's even there.
Sorry for possibly coming off too strongly, but "invisible diseases" that no one understands and many people say "are all in your head" are kind of my personal area of expertise....an expertise I would rather not have, but I do. These are the kind of diseases that insurance often doesn't cover because there's no "cure", so these people, who are too sick to work, can't get long term care insurance because insurance companies are interested in "cures", not prevention and/or compassionate care. Too many of these people AVOID doctors BECAUSE they will be told it's all in their head. Too many of these people, incidentally, are sick for many reasons, not least among them the fact that they don't get enough sleep and lack of rest combined with the chronic stress of our society, does, quite literally, kill.
I dunno, maybe it's that for every truly healthy person I know, I know several chronically ill people. It almost seems epidemic, and the median age is getting younger and younger. And I look at the healthy 20-something person, and know that it's just a matter of time before they, too, are ill. Perhaps if they all spent a little more time preventing and being proactive - not anxious and fearful, but knowledgeable and aggressively careful about their health - they would save the insurance companies many dollars over the long haul, AND make better lives, more meaningful lives, for themselves and their family.
Because it's hard to know that you have a meaningful life when you're too ill to make it out of bed, when you're so tired that it takes you 3 hours to wake up in the morning, when everything hurts too much too move, when even spending time with other people is so draining you have to spend weeks recovering.
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