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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: US health care system depends on keeping people sick Health care is undoubtedly the top economic issue for most Americans. Until we all have the peace of mind in knowing that we can get sick, break an arm, or fight an unexpected battle with an unwelcome disease, we can't focus our full attention on the many other serious issues facing our country. A lack of health care for all Americans will keep us from finding the solutions we need to rebuild and recover our position as a world leader. As a disabled person, I have struggled with our current medical systems. Medicare has closed many doors necessary for me to see doctors who might have been able to offer me insight about my illness. Medicaid has refused to use common sense in their refusals of financial support for my wellness and drained my energy in the fight. Medicare Part D has denied coverage for some prescriptions and even medicines administered in the hospital emergency room. Clearly, these insurance plans do not work well. Others have similar stories about their health plans, and many do not even have a health plan. While I have reflected on how we might build a better health insurance plan, I have noted with much jealousy that other countries do have a more progressive approach to an awareness of 21st-century diseases and solutions for their management, treatments and support of those who have fallen victim to them. What is different between their idea of health insurance and ours? I believe the difference is not so much in the way their health plans work as it is in how they define what health care is. It is also what underlies that definition of health and what motivates them to see it differently than we do. Since our health care system is based on corporate profit, quarterly bottom lines, and CEO bonuses, we have created insurance plans that rely on sick people. It is clearly more profitable to sustain that model by pushing pharmaceuticals and ignoring alternative models of medical treatments and medicines. We continue to fund research for more drugs and treatments for diseases that are often caused by our failure to admit environmental insults, harm from toxic chemicals and overpopulation. We have a disease-based view of health care. Other countries have health plans that rely on funding from their citizens. Every person then has a stake in the cost of keeping people well, rather than allowing them to become sick. This view of a wellness-based health insurance allows for the acceptance of alternative medical methods, such as acupuncture. It allows doctors to be healers rather than bureaucratic paper-pushers. Wellness-based health care encourages a broader view of what constitutes "medicine" by including what nurtures our bodies, supporting them and keeping them healthy. The healthy foods we eat would be considered "medicines" by a wellness-based health plan, and not just those pharmaceuticals our American health plans cover. Vitamins, minerals, and compounded formulations of them could become a new business based on wellness and not disease: a new business that can include ancient, alternative ideas of how to support the body that is not currently in the ideal state of wellness, rather than rescuing the body after it is harmed. I believe that if we, as a nation, can change our very definitions of how we see health care -- well people and not sick people -- we can nurture our citizens, allowing our best and brightest to achieve solutions for all our other problems. Let's make this moment of change really count for something. Catherine Hollingsworth lives in Anchorage.
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