Need to Improve American Health Care - Part 6

I would like to once again ride on the cycle of getting back what you give. I would like to give good health to U.S. and get back the same in return. Let me delve into how it is the case. I have been at war with myself over the past 18 months in U.S. working in one domain – health care. There is a significant amount of efforts put into it as individuals, teams and organizations who are all working in this domain. At least the direct efforts of persons like me working in the U.S. should polarize the system and improve it for the better. The universal truth which everyone knows is the health care system needs huge improvement in U.S. - astronomical costs with poor outcomes. Know that, despite spending 20% of GDP on healthcare since the turn of this century, the services are inaccessible to all, health of citizens is poor, immunity is substandard, and a little-known virus killed 1.1 million people in the country in the last few years during the pandemic. It exposed the hard fact of this country faring the worst in entire world in dealing with an invading virus into our physique. The rising costs just implies how you cannot treat a person who is already weak. U.S. has evolved to be a super-power but it came at the cost of the health of its citizens. If the premise of raising health care costs is natural and correct, then the onus is mostly on improving the precious commodity of ours without spending too much. How you can improve your health to offset the huge costs is the solution to the root of the problem. The nation needs to fix this underlying problem which will alter the course of its external factors dealing with the precious God-given gift to all of us – a sound health and sound body. The external factors being the hospitals, pharma, insurers, administrators and everyone who are working on our weak bodies but placing high costs which is natural. Something as precious as diamond will be costly and there are traders in this country who are trying to restore the precious, naturally sliding health parameters at a high premium. When we want as precious as gold, there will be gold-diggers at work. The lessons from the covid pandemic must be more abstract than peripheral, more internal than external. Similarly, the ways to fix the broken health care system must be more abstract than peripheral and more inherent than mere superficial or external.   

It all brings us to the point of treating the root of the problem – improving the inner health of current and future citizens of the country to reduce the health care costs. It should be the main concern and concentration of everyone’s focus. You don’t need high costs to treat a good body of ours. The rise of health care costs is inversely proportional to dipping median health of common citizens of the country. Improving the natural health of the citizen per se will bring down the external price to artificially become heathy. Our focus should be on healthy practices, healthy habits and healthy lifestyles. Health should be given the highest priority for a great future, not just for today but many years, decades, centuries and thousands of years ahead. The U.S. as we know has some skewed priorities and questionable practices which leads to horrible outcomes in certain areas. Climate change or uncertain future or unhealthy future are all unfavorable projections arising out of the current, past actions. We need to act now to alter the course and create hope for tomorrow, leading to a sustainable future. The rising health care costs, in a way, point to a bleak future. In 2021, national health expenditures amounted to 12.9 thousand U.S. dollars per capita. For comparison, in 1960, per capital expenditures for health stood at just 146 U.S. dollars. How we reached here is a puzzle and we need to go back to the good times of the past.

 

If the hard work and monumental efforts in this health domain is any barometer, there need to be changes on the ground in improving the naturally acquired good health, preserve it and pass on to the future. We don’t need another covid pandemic to remind us of our poor standing. We can’t say there are high health care costs when our own health is poor. The total U.S. health care spending in 2021, in the midst of pandemic, is 4.3 trillion U.S. dollars while a million have passed away. No amount of sophistication, medical innovation, or associated technology can save you when your underlying health is poor. This systemic and deep-rooted problem needs to be rooted away to arrive at the solution. I don’t want to preach but to attain good health, we need to make conscious efforts directed at it. Some of the conscious choices to make are - Balanced Diet, Regular Exercise, Adequate Sleep, Stress Management, Hygiene and Sanitation, Limit Harmful Substances, Mental Health Care, Healthy Relationships, Practice Mindfulness, Setting Realistic Goals. As a checklist, we need to consciously work towards each one of those and many healthy practices to alter the course of our unhealthy trajectory.

 

I don’t want to go in detail about each one of those practices but delve into the first one – good and healthy diet or a balanced diet. The U.S. can come as a laughingstock or a big loser in this first point itself. In plain terms, the U.S. don’t have a habit to cook and eat healthy balanced diet. Rather, it depends on the gold-digging fast-food industry to collect food outside at restaurants or drive-throughs. It is crazy to look at this habit of eating processed food as a daily routine. When there is gold, there will be gold diggers at play. The result - the great U.S. fast food industry is one of the largest and most profitable in the world. It generates billions of dollars in annual revenue, with major chains contributing significantly to the industry's overall sales. Billions for eating into your health and trillions for treating it. The fast-food industry has its role in promoting unhealthy eating habits, contributing to the obesity epidemic, and for the nutritional quality of some of its products. Leaving about everything else, eating cooked home food is a healthy choice. The eating habits of U.S. sums up the nation's unhealthy habits which the country also outsources all over the world. I ate in a restaurant once a year during my childhood. There is no habit or sometimes this ‘tasty’ food is a luxury. We always cooked at home, day-in and day-out as a routine. I never purchased any food outside in those good old days. In U.S., I lived once in a neighborhood where a shopping arena is dotted with nearly 10 restaurants. A friend who visited said the place is very good for legendary fast-food chains and he can eat in a different restaurant each day. What an attraction, what an aspiration and what a habit to cultivate. But a food restaurant at every corner and a profitable business out of making our simple lunch, dinner just exposes the wrong direction this country has headed. I don’t want to hurt many but simply point out the deficiency. I would write more on this fast-food culture prevalent in U.S. another time. As a whole and to reiterate we need to better nurture inner health which doesn’t effectuate high health care costs and improve the overall state of the country.