What Americans Think About Prevention

Excerpt taken from:
Dr. Mark Hyman’s Nine-Point Plan for Real Healthcare Reform—What do Americans Think about Prevention July 14, 2009 as posted on American Association for Health Freedom.

The concept of wellness is of course closely allied with the concept of prevention. What do Americans say is their most important healthcare reform priority? Hint: it’s not getting the government to take over healthcare!

A new public opinion poll found that Americans rank prevention as the most important healthcare reform priority. According to Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA), "This survey underscores what I have been saying from the outset: If we pass comprehensive health reform that extends coverage but does nothing to reform our broken system by emphasizing prevention and public health, then we will have failed. And we do not intend to fail. We know that prevention and wellness efforts are a key to reducing costs within a reformed healthcare system. And they will be a centerpiece of the reform effort underway on Capitol Hill."

Other Capitol Hill leaders in the healthcare reform battle agree. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D–MT) added, "This report shows that the American people believe prevention and wellness are the cornerstones of a high-performing healthcare system. And they're right. Today, we spend nearly $800 billion on health problems that are directly linked to lifestyle and poor health habits each year—about one third of our total healthcare spending. Simply put, that's too much. Reforming our system to focus on prevention will drive down costs and produce better health outcomes."

"This poll gives hard evidence that Americans know what works," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D–OR). "Prevention and wellness come first."

But true prevention is not the early-detection screenings followed by more and more prescriptions at a younger and younger age currently being pushed by allopathic medicine. According to Dr. Abraham Verghese, “If your preventive strategy is medical, if it involves us, if it consists of screening, finding medical conditions early, shaking the bushes for high cholesterols, or abnormal EKGs, markers for prostate cancer such as PSA, then more often than not you don’t save anything and you might generate more medical costs.” He might have added that taking more and more prescriptions at a younger and younger age may leave you sicker than you would have been.

True preventive medicine, as practiced by US integrative practitioners, involves advising and counseling the patient to make lifestyle choices that can turn on and turn off genes that predispose us to chronic degenerative disease. True preventive care does not push prescriptions or procedures, and does not generate billions for conventional medicine. It is based on commonsense, science-based lifestyle, diet, and supplement choices that can prevent and even reverse heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other chronic degenerative disease. And it is a true solution to our nation’s runaway healthcare costs.
Consumers hold the power, guided by their integrative practitioners.

Read the full article here.

Daniel Silver