Preventive Medicine? You Won't Find It There . . .

"To the Canadian Medical Association, the message is clear: the woeful lack of spending on physician services is the biggest danger to the beleaguered health-care system," said The Medical Post.* This statement is profound in that it provides much of the answer to the medical industry’s REAL underlying motivations. It reveals to us that it is not in their best interests to create healthy people.

This is not to say that doctors or caretakers on the personal level have these attitudes toward their patients. However, one has to wonder just how and to what degree much this underlying, subtle realization controls the way they practice. Beyond them, further up on the hierarchical ladder, one has to wonder whether it is so subtle.

The medical industry depends on monies flowing from what?—From those who are SICK! If we had a world of healthy people, how much money would the medical industry lose—the hospitals, radiology departments, nursing homes, anesthesiologists, pharmacies and drug companies, and doctors and nurses themselves? Moreover, how many individuals would be out of work? Then how much interest does the monster conglomerate known as the medical industry have in immunizations and programs that encourage lifestyle changes or early screenings of at risk people to prevent a disease?

In addition, what is preventive medicine in the medical clinic? Doctors perform essentially three functions: prescribe medicine, perform surgery, and set bones. Preventive medicine in the doctor's office is a periodic medical examination. True preventive medicine, however, is better suited in the offices of nutritionists (not dieticians) and knowledgeable health psychologists. The factors to address are nutrition, exercise, stress management, and the previously mentioned changes of lifestyle (e.g., smoking, drinking, drugs, careless and deviant sexual activities, etc.).

Doctors remain the most influential in this area, although they know precious little about either nutrition or psychology. Yet they are too often reluctant to refer patients to these types of services–-and many health care providers (insurance companies) do provide a dearth of them, if any at all, even though it definitely IS in THEIR interests to do so. The answer lies in education: education of medical health professionals, health care providers, and of patients and their significant others. There is no such thing as "preventive medicine" in the doctor’s office. Therefore, no true evaluation can take place there.

* Hodges, D. (2001). "Health Care Strained by Lack of Spending on Doctors." The Medical Post, Vol. 37, Page20.