Ah, the miracles of modern medicine and its genius cure-all for maladies that grow more and more malicious each day. How rare it is that there's no pill, procedure, or prick that can vanquish a problem right where it stands.
Yet, with all that said, people are ailing far and wide, and several diseases aren't fully understood by the scientific community, although that doesn't stop them from prescribing. It's almost as if something's missing from the entire healthcare system. Then again, that's no surprise.
Buy Civil War-related books online, and it's plainly obvious that a flawed system isn't new to our blessed country. Then buy a healthcare reform book, and you'll see that this flawed system isn't new either. With my book, Curing Medicare, and several other fiction and nonfiction books I've tried to raise some awareness about this, but the medical industry is so cemented, and so industrial, no one dares challenge it. If you'd like to order nonfiction books to read then check out the Andy Lazris bookstore online.
What's Wrong With Healthcare?
I've been a practicing doctor for twenty-five years, and I write about what I've seen, and quite frankly, the medical system falls short on several accounts. Over the years, and by years I mean the last century, there's been almost surgical removal of everything that wasn't found to be as profitable. What all the solutions now have in common is that they're largely pharmaceutical-based.
The words medicine and healthcare are interchangeable today, but that's because industry and government have worked for hand in hand to eliminate the competition and secure the success of a rigged system. My works of medical fiction have resonated with doctors and patients because of how lacking the industry has become. So many treatment plans are created to manage symptoms or gain control, rather than to mend the problem at its root.
Thanks to capitalists like big pharma and our beloved government's desperation to retain its generous donors, the scientific community has been forced into a tunnel-vision style development. With blinders on, many potential areas of healthcare and improvement have been neglected or rerouted to mimic the biomedical model, which is what we're policed into applying today.
With the following, modern medicine might have managed to become effective healthcare, but the closest you'll find to that today is in online fiction bookstores.
Diversity In Physicians
The lab coats aren't the only thing that's all white in healthcare. In America, institutionalized racism is the elephant in the room of every corporation, but in medicine, it's far more blatant. My coming nonfiction bookA Fork in the Road in Baltimoreexplored a decision made a hundred years ago that strategically shut down the education of more than half of the African-American med students and lower-income folk.
Why? Mr. Abraham Flexner, who we call Mr. because he was not a doctor, had a medical br
eakthrough that the scientific community and the government together decided to embrace. He stated in the Flexner Report, that allows people of color to practice medicine was to endanger "the unfortunate whites".
He also implied the same about students from pastoral medical schools, implying, or rather bluntly stating, that patients would be put at risk of ringworm. As a result, all but two African American medical schools were shut down, along with many rural schools.
The lack of diversity today is the result of thousands of stolen opportunities.
It doesn't stop there: several people are left with no choice but to see physicians who they don't feel comfortable with. More than that, there's a lack of doctors with whom they can properly share their experience with. When you see a doctor, there's some level of understanding necessary for you to feel at ease, and then the doctor can correctly and empathetically cater to your needs.
How in certain cases, women prefer to see women, and men prefer to see men. If you shop for health benefits-related books, it's pretty clear that patient-doctor rapport is an integral part of accurate diagnoses and accommodating treatment plans. If only the people in charge of policy would pick up a book, they hadn't written themselves.
Alternative Medical Practices
Alternative treatment, or in other words, quackery. That's what the consensus was in the early 1900s when everything but chemically engineered pharmaceuticals were ruled detrimental elements of healthcare. Only many of these practices had been developing for years, based on the results they'd achieved.
Nonfiction book websites might offer some insights into how they worked and were beneficial, but formal studies were halted. Here are a few examples of what we lost.
Spirituality
The role of spiritual practices and yoga in healthcare is a big thing in cultures and religions, and many studies have brought some legitimacy to the idea. Still, no doctor will ever present this as a way to improve your prognosis.
This isn't because all practitioners are rooting for big pharma. It's because, according to the policies that doctors are bound to, you'd be well within your rights to slap said doctor with a lawsuit. All for trying to do everything they could to help you.
Emotional Wellbeing
People will say, "depression is a killer," but still, they don't give mental health the attention it deserves. There is proof enough to fill a hospital bed that a chemical treatment, no matter how expensive and potent, can be hindered by the patient's state of mind.
Picture a hospital. Stark white, bright lights, strange contraptions for beds, and an air of anxiety: that doesn't make one thirst for life, does it? Sure, it's hygienic, but it's also the most cost-effective way to store a mass amount of sick people.
Hospitals will refuse to let patients leave, at least not without signing a document clearing them of responsibility, even if the hospital experience is what's sucking the life out of them. The message is pretty clear. Either you survive in an environment where not even a bacterium could grow, or figure it out yourself. It's a pretty dramatic stance to take when human life is in question.
Almost as if life isn't as valuable as not being sued.
Doctor Of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.)
Osteopathic medicine is fairly similar to regular medicine, but it wasn't meant to be. A D.O. is different from an M.D. in the sense that they're more hands-on than the latter. They also use complementary healing practices like massage.
In the year 1910, there were medical schools in America dedicated to Osteopathic, but after Flexner Report came crashing into healthcare, they were left with the option of shutting down or becoming just like traditional medical schools. A hundred years of development in a field of proven science were ripped away just like that.
Customized Care
The order of the land is standardized care, one size fits all, and if not, it's a most unfortunate tragedy, but not nearly so tragic that we need to rewrite our policy. The Hippocratic Oath states in no uncertain terms that a doctor must treat the patient and not the charts. Then policy loudly dictates that a doctor must treat the charts and not the patient.
The Hippocratic Oath is not a baseless, feel-good text. It's a list of good practices to save as many lives as possible. Sure, standard care allows more patients to be treated in a day, but not effectively. With care designed for each patient, odds are that there'd be more beds available anyway.
We have to say odds because we're not allowed to prove this.
Compassion and Boundaries
Hospitals might be draining the life of patients with their clinical dreary vibes, but sometimes it's the actual treatment. Think of chemotherapy, one of the most commonly used cancer treatments. In a lot of cases, it's the chemo that's the cause of death, not the actual cancer.
Of course, this is only done because there aren't a lot of alternatives available. However, another stipulation of the oath is that doctors need to know when to stop, especially when it comes to end-of-life care. A huge issue in medicine today is overtreatment. This is what it's called when care becomes so excessive that it stops being care for and starts being painful.
A patient may choose to stop treatment instead of having painful procedures that would add a few days to their lives. However, a doctor wouldn't recommend this first. It would go against their job description, and second because it could lead to a lawsuit.
The fear of malpractice suits is listed as the primary cause of overtreatment.
If you find the current state of healthcare in America sad, buy The Geriatrics Vengeance Club online and you'll be laughing about it in no time.
Purchase 3D Fictional book online that comes with a custom soundtrack. Talk about an immersive experience!
If humor and music aren't your things, and you're looking for something more serious like a
Historical Fiction book online, I highly recommend Three Brothers from Virginia, the thrilling tale of an inter-racial family living through the Civil War.