The “healthcare” system in our country has been a hot topic for quite some time now. It seems obvious to most that it is broken and there have been many different ideas as how to “fix” it. Well I think we need to go deeper and decide if we even have a healthcare system. If we don’t even have a true healthcare system then all the “fixing” or building of the current system is still not going to give us a healthcare system. In this post I will be discussing what health care is and what sick care is and you can decide for yourself what kind of system we currently have.
Sick Care
We will start with sick care because this is a concept that most may not be familiar with. If we take the words “sick care” and think about it, shouldn’t it mean caring for the sick? That is exactly what it is, and it is not a bad thing but not exactly health care. Sick care is a reactive type of system. You need to be “sick” before the system really kicks in. Sick care is all about treating a disease or condition. This leads to looking more at symptoms, conditions, or even parts of the body instead of considering the whole. Things get compartmentalized and interactions between different parts of the body often get overlooked.
The treatments of choice in sick care are drugs and surgery. This, in part, comes from focusing on sickness and leads to thinking the body must sick and needs to be changed from the outside. So the options are to control through drugs the processes of the body, or to physically change the body through surgery. It is an outside-in approach to treatment.
Health Care
So following the same logic as before, “health care” must be caring for the healthy. While I think that works, I think a better way of describing it would be to care for the body to maintain health. True health care is a proactive system. It is not waiting for something to happen but constantly doing things that help to maintain health and prevent sickness. True health care looks at the whole person and considers what different interactions or factors may lead to disease and addresses these things.
Treatments in a true health care system are varied, but all support health. It is an inside-out approach that considers that the body is supposed to be healthy and can be that way when it is taken care of properly. Some of the preventative strategies in a health care system include reducing stress, getting adequate sleep, eating healthy, exercising regularly, and getting chiropractic care or other care to help keep the body functioning at its best.
What Do We Have?
Thinking about the current system in the US, does it sound more like a health care system or a sick care system? You can decide, but consider what things the current system reimburses for and tends to encourage. And if we do not have a health care system all the “fixing” isn’t going to get us there; we will need to start a whole new foundation to build on.
Conclusion
The good thing with true health care is that it really is all up to YOU. You are the only one who can make the decisions to make you healthy. And you don’t need an outside system to do it for you. In fact it can’t because true health comes from the inside out. So what are you going to do today to start your own health care system? If you don’t know, talk to us. We can help.
