Good health care is central to good health. We in Canada pride ourselves our public healthcare. Its publicly funded, accessible to all citizens and of high quality in most regions. But is it sustainable? No, probably not. It consumes 18% of our GDP at the moment and as the Canadian population continues to age that proportion is bound to grow. Could the healthcare system be better. Yes, but what would “better” be? More MRI’s, quicker service, free pharmaceuticals, house calls, more gadgets? How about a healthcare system that supported healing and disease prevention and not disease management. How about a system that encouraged empowerment not dependency. How about a system that encouraged sufficiency rather than fear.
What would your ideal healthcare system look like? How would we encourage people to take better care of themselves? How would we encourage greater choice in healthcare services?
There was a recent workshop by The Wonders; their website is called http://www.thewonders.com entitled Changing the world now. The main conclusions of the discussion were that the present system is not really sustainable and is leading to contraction in society; an alternative system to the present system of governance is a system guidance.
What is needed to get to a system of guidance is for people to realise that they have given away their power to the government and they don’t really need countless rules and regulations and an organisation to look after all of their needs.
The process would be quite slow because for real change people would have to hear about the concept and see an advantage in changing. It would not be a revolution more a case of politicians changing their policies to appeal to the changing aspirations and desires of the voters.
The relevance of all this to the medical system is that people now see the medical system as a crisis management system and wait for a major problem to occur and then require a quick fix rather than an alternative of being self responsible and choosing to eat healthy food and live a healthy lifestyle.
One alternative healthcare system that was proposed was that each person was given a limited grant for medical expenses to last their whole life. This might focus people’s awareness that their choices can have an impact on their health.
This is only a fraction of the material covered
The recordings are going to be available in the next month or two for sale at
http://secure.cancart.net/thewonders.com/home.php
Or excerpts will be free at http://www.youtube.com/user/ChooseFreelyTV
I hope you will excuse me for mentioning someone’s commercial product here I do not get any commission from the sales I just think what was discussed was very relevant to the subject.
Comment by Paul — May 16, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Waiting for the outside world to develop a process of healthcare is a long wait….how about taking personal responsibility for caring for one’s own health? Learning about the body and keeping it strong, learning about nutrients that maintain that strength and developing a life plan which follows one’s passion would be a worthwhile endeavour. The more we learn about ourselves provides shorten waiting lines for help – knowing what you need is a good thing. I want to know what one has done for themselves before they get a dose of care. This is not ‘care less’; it is ‘care full. Everyone should get attended to but first – tend to self.
Comment by JM — May 17, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Yes, personal responsibility is the first place to start and ultimately where we end up but if we are going to move healthcare policy towards personal empowerment, perhaps we need to start talking to each other and to our policy makers with this objective in mind. Currently, most of the discussion is about disease management and what the system can do for me. Perhaps the conversation should start with “how can I stay healthy” and if I get sick, how can I be empowered to make the best choices for me.
Comment by Editor — May 20, 2011 at 9:35 am
Hi Paul, thanks for the reference. I don’t mind the commercial at all. The Wonders are the inspiration for this site. I like the idea of guidance in the sense that gov’t or society offers our citizens a range of choices to choose from or principles to explore. I also like the idea of voucher or a healthcare account that would allow us to spend our healthcare dollars on what we see fit. The question arises, however, what is a fair amount of funds to give people? What about people with chronic diseases or debilitating diseases, how do you set a fund level for them? What if they run out of funds, do you let them go without care? Similarly, what about a person who burns through their money on some quackery, do you leave them without care as well?
Comment by John Lerner — May 20, 2011 at 10:00 am