Does you Doctor make money by getting you healthy or preventing you from getting sick? Or does s/he make money by doing ‘procedures’.
Which is better?
I guess if you were sick, you’d say that you want to get healthy and are willing to pay for it.
If you’re healthy, I suppose you’ll want someone who will help you stay that way.
No one wants ‘procedures’ unless it’s the only way to solve the problem you have.
Prevention is always best and it often doesn’t cost much. So why don’t we see more of it?
- Could it be that drug companies don’t make money from it?
- Could it be that insurance companies don’t pay for it?
- Could it be that most Doctors aren’t trained to do it?
Probably all of the above.
In dental school, there’s a course in ‘Prevention’. It’s often slotted in with other much more difficult and ‘important’ courses in the second or third years. Most of a student’s time is taken up by learning ‘procedures’. That’s the skill the schools teach.
Then the student graduates. S/he might do some advanced study in guess what? Procedures! And when s/he finally gets into practice s/he finds out that not only doesn’t it pay to take the time to do prevention, even insurance companies don’t cover it. Not wanting to upset their new patients and charge for it, out of pocket, they just don’t do it.
I’m not justifying the process. I’m just explaining it. The system is broken.
That doesn’t mean that you have to buy into the system. It does mean that you have to educate yourself to ‘do it yourself’. That’s why it’s so important to read this book, as it gives you information that will help you save money and prevent disease.
It means that you have to aggressively seek information from your healthcare providers. If they’re good, they’ll know about prevention even if they chose not to share the information with you. Make them.
Prevention isn’t costly, it’s just time consuming. If you’re lazy, go ahead, wait and get sick and then see the Doctor. Just don’t complain about it.
To your health and wellness,
Michael