Chapter 10 health care system

The health care system in this country is an eye-popping enterprise.In every sense of that adjective it is.However misallocated and uncoordinated it may be, the sheer size and breadth of the collective collective effort, and the cost, are at first staggering.The amount of dollars spent is almost unbelievable.That number varies from year to year, always rising, from about 10 billion in 1950 to an estimated 140 billion in 1978, and will have to rise even more in the next few years, when the national health insurance program is implemented.Official estimates suggest that we are now spending a full eight percent of our gross national product on health care.This rate can quickly rise to ten to twelve percent.

These are official figures, and only count the dollars that come in through official sources—only hospital bills, doctors’ fees, medications prescribed, insurance costs, building and installation of facilities, research funding, and so on. But those dollars are only part of the picture.Is there any reason to limit the estimation to strictly professional expenses?In fact, there is also a huge market in which there is a huge amount of circulation and exchange of various things intended to improve health. A not insignificant part of the national economy, the television and radio industries, is very dependent on health, or more precisely, on disease.Many of the stories, which are not specifically about medical events, also have plots throughout that are essentially medical, disease, or surgical scenarios.In these stories, the central human dilemma is disease.Not only that, but almost every commercial that airs on a normal night is nothing more than a grocery stand specializing in healing items.Everything is available for bloated stomach, constipation, headache, nervous tension, insomnia or hypersomnia, arthritis, anemia, restlessness, hopeless body odor, excessive sweating, yellow tooth roots, dandruff, There are things to treat sores, boils and hemorrhoids.The catering industry has become a surrogate for doctors.Listening to their commercials, it seems that breakfast cereals are supplements, vitamins, and tonics.Now, these things are in the hands of the professional health food industry, and they are exclusive franchisees.Their products are non-polluting, organic, and "naturally" rejuvenating and rejuvenating.Chewing gum is now sold as a tooth cleaner.Vitamins take the place of prayer.

So is the publishing industry.Hardcover books, paperback books, magazines, whatever, as if you couldn't live without health, talking about new cures for mental health, cures for arthritis, and most medicinal diets for everything. Tube. The transformation of our environment itself has become a huge industry. In order to make it beneficial to health, the cost we have invested is more expensive than the moon.Pollution was considered first and foremost a medical problem; when a weather presenter on television told us whether the air in New York was "acceptable" that day, he thought he was talking about human lungs.Pollutants could impair photosynthesis of algae in the ocean, or wipe out all life in the topsoil, or kill all birds.These substances are causing concern that they are causing cancer in us—a big deal.

Tennis is not just a national skill.It became a religion, a kind of group physical therapy.Jogging is a lot of work, and every day crowds of people in their underpants flood the streets, moving with stupidly quick little steps, hoping to live forever by it.Bicycles are also a cure for illness.Meditation may be good for the mind, but even better for blood pressure. As citizens of a nation, we are obsessed with health. There's something inherently very unhealthy about all of these things.It seems that we are not seeking the joy of life, but preventing and plugging leaks, and postponing death.We have lost faith in the human body.

The new consensus is that we are poorly designed objects, inherently prone to failure, vulnerable to a host of internal and external enemies, and therefore life-threatening, precarious and ready to fall apart at any moment.Therefore, we will always need supervision and support.Without a health care system to take care of occupations, we're going to fall right where we are. This is a new way of looking at things that may only be explained as a manifestation of spontaneous, undirected, social propaganda.We keep telling each other these sorts of things, which in turn are seen on TV shows and newsweekly, confirming all these fears, instructing us, like the usual closing paragraph of a daily whisper column, to "seek expert help" .Go for an inspection.Eat in moderation.meditation.jogging.Have an operation.Take two tablets with water.spring.If you still have pain, abnormality, and boredom, see your doctor.

It is a strange thing that we happen to believe now that we are in terrible health, and are constantly threatened with disease and death, when the facts should now show the opposite.In a more rational world, you'd think we'd be throwing a bicentennial celebration of our general goodness. In 1976, out of a population of approximately 220 million, only 1.9 million, or slightly less than one percent, died.In terms of death rates alone, the record is by no means dismal.Life expectancy for the entire population rose to seventy-two years, the highest ever achieved in this country.Despite a host of serious illnesses for which there is no cure—cancer, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, and so on—most of us are apparently well on their way to longevity.This situation is impossible for any previous generation to imagine.Looking at the figures in the American Death Statistics report, it can be seen that the diseases that plague us most are infections of the respiratory system and gastrointestinal tract.And these diseases are basically temporary and things that can be reversed. What is needed is the exhortation of grandma who pays attention to hygiene and does not get sick.Mainly thanks to the sanitation engineering, nutrition and housing improvements of the last century, and secondly, to the immunology and antibiotics of the present age, we have rid ourselves of those nasty infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis and lobar pneumonia.Those diseases have killed us before half our lives.We've even come to understand more and more the underlying mechanisms of some of the persistent illnesses that still plague us.Sooner or later, depending on the quality and intensity of biomedical research, we will learn to deal effectively with most, if not all, of them.At that point, we will still age and die, but that aging, and even that death, can be a healthy process.In contrast, at that time we should be more satisfied with ourselves and more optimistic about the future.

The trouble is, we've been plagued by propaganda that not only harms the spirit of society; it renders any health care system, no matter how large and effective, unworkable.If people are taught to believe that they are inherently vulnerable, on the verge of a fatal disease, always in need of professional help from all sides, and forever dependent on a supposed "prevention first" medicine, there will be An infinite number of clinics, clinics and hospitals are called upon to meet this need.In the end, we all became doctors, busy taking pictures of each other and not doing anything else all day long, and we got sick when we found out.

In real life, however, we are pretty healthy people.Far from being poorly assembled shoddy goods, we are durable organisms, surprisingly tough, brimming with health, and ready to handle most things.If we continue to listen to those sermons, the new threat to our interests is that the whole people will become health hysterics, live in fear, and worry half to death. And we no longer have time to spend on these things, nor can we be distracted by them, because there are other, much more pressing problems to deal with.Really, what we should worry about is that making one's health a priority as we do may be a symptom of what it's called avoidance.Because thinking like that gives you an excuse to run upstairs and recuperate on the couch, sniff the air for pollution, spray the room with deodorant, while outside the house, the whole society is messed up Nobody cares.