Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Health and Well­ness Is An “Inside Job”

Med­i­cine used to be dif­fer­ent.  Doc­tors couldn’t do too much for you.  They didn’t get paid very much and they were focused more on help­ing than on man­ag­ing a busi­ness.

Hos­pi­tals were community-based not-for-profit or pub­lic enti­ties.  Drugs and devices were not as sophis­ti­cated or expen­sive, and they weren’t mar­keted directly to con­sumers.  Well Toto, we’re not in Kansas any­more.

After wit­ness­ing our “health­care reform” process you must have seen that almost every­thing about med­i­cine is now BIG BUSINESS.  If you don’t know that by now, you’re not pay­ing atten­tion.

Yes there are still some “lit­tle guys” out there, but they’re play­ing by big busi­ness’ rules.  What does that mean for you?  Hang on, I’m com­ing to that.

Now it’s often said ” the first rule of busi­ness is to stay in busi­ness.”  It’s not wrong either.

Mary-Kate Olsen

Mary-Kate Olsen expressed it well when she said, “Our ulti­mate goal is to stay in busi­ness. We are not here with a spe­cific plan,” when talk­ing about her com­pany.  So Mary-Kate and Ash­ley Olsen are try­ing to stay in busi­ness by sell­ing you things.  No prob­lem.  No one expects the Olsens to be look­ing out for your inter­ests in run­ning their firm.  I hope they do well.

But most par­tic­i­pants in the med­ical indus­try is also try­ing to stay in busi­ness by sell­ing you things.  BIG PROBLEM.  Tra­di­tion­ally we have relied upon our med­ical care providers to have our best inter­ests at heart.  Maybe once they did, but this is not how “busi­ness” works.  And make no mis­take it’s a busi­ness.  The rules have changed.  We need to “be care­ful out there.”

So, what is the med­ical indus­try try­ing to sell you?  Med­ical care of course — pro­ce­dures, tests, devices, drugs and treat­ments.  But it’s med­ical care you may not need or want.  It’s even med­ical care that may be harm­ful to you.  Maybe you think this is hyper­bole or exag­ger­a­tion.  “It’s really not that bad,” you say to your­self.  Yes it is.  Believe it.  It’s been esti­mated that about 30% of all care is harm­ful or unnec­es­sary.  Per­son­ally I think it’s more than that.

Check it out for your­self. Here are two approaches:

• First, spend an hour or so on the inter­net search­ing one of the fol­low­ing terms: “overuse,” “harm­ful,” or “unnec­es­sary” com­bined with one of these terms: “chemother­apy,” “radi­a­tion ther­apy,” “CT scans,” “hor­mones,” “spinal surgery,” and “new drugs.”  Be pre­pared to be con­cerned.  And this will just scratch the sur­face of things being pushed on Amer­i­cans by med­ical firms of all types (includ­ing doc­tors) des­per­ate to stay in busi­ness.

• Sec­ond, find a free­think­ing doc­tor or hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tor — one who’s been around a while.  If you have one who is a per­sonal friend that’s even bet­ter.  Get him or her alone for a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with an adult bev­er­age or two and ask, “How much is med­i­cine in Amer­ica influ­enced by big busi­ness?” and “What do you see hap­pen­ing that makes money for some­one in the sys­tem but doesn’t make too much sense for patients?”  Trust me, you won’t like what you hear.

The med­ical indus­try has also largely sold us on the idea that health and well­ness comes from them.  It works like this — sell the idea that care is nec­es­sary for health and well­ness, then sell as much care as pos­si­ble.

Of course it’s wrong.  Health and well­ness is largely an inside job.  How you live is likely to be the most impor­tant deter­mi­nate of your own per­sonal health and well­ness.

So what’s the answer?  We’re not going back to Kansas, and we’ve got to deal with real­ity.  Let’s be edu­cated con­sumers of care.  Let’s take charge of our health­care and our bod­ies.  Care for your­self phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally.

Take a skep­ti­cal atti­tude towards more test­ing and more treat­ment.  Don’t be an “easy sale” for the med­ical indus­try that over­promises and under deliv­ers.

Choose more health and less care!