Killing Ourselves With High Medical Bills

In a recent article in Time Magazine, a detailed account is given of someone experiencing life threatening cancer and not having adequate insurance to cover it.  In this scenario that was presented, the couple did have insurance, but since they were self employed, the policy was not enough to cover the costs of cancer treatment at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  You can read more of the details in the Time Magazine article, Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.

Even though we are killing ourselves with high medical bills in this country, I am not trying to vilify MD Anderson Cancer Center.  In fact, I believe they are helping to bring together all facets of healing and health care.  The only thing that bothers me in this article is that their president is also tied financially with some major pharmaceutical companies.  I find it sad that there is this close of relationship between health care services and companies that are profiting from the same thing.  In my mind, it is a conflict of interest and you will have to decide for yourself how you feel about it.

Of course we can sit here all day and blame someone or everyone for the high medical bills.  Regardless of who we blame, each one of us individually are killing ourselves with the state of healthcare in this country.  It is up to each one of us to change how we perceive what health care and healing is, rather than just following the status quo and doing what society dictates we should do.  I am very adamant on this, because I know that while medical care is necessary, it often negates the individual's role


All too often, we get the sniffles, or a cold or some other condition and the first thing we do is run to the doctor's office for answers.  Okay, we might go online and read about the symptoms we have leading us to diagnose what conditions we may have.  Many times we have chronic pain and we look for people that will take our pain away thinking we are doing the right thing for ourself.  Unfortunately, when we use tunnel vision to help heal ourselves, we are actually hurting ourselves more for the future than we are doing good.

In order to understand what I am saying, we need to drop the paradigms that we have been taught from an infant on, because they are not getting us anywhere.  If our medical care was so effective, than the $2.8 trillion we will spend this year on health care would be actually solving health care issues, not just putting a band-aid on them.  When I refer to putting a band-aid on health issues, I mean that just taking a drug to get rid of a symptom is not healing the body.  It is only covering it up so we can't readily see it.

If we want to stop killing ourselves with high medical bills, than we need to begin living our life differently.  We need to begin to understand what we eat and how we consume food in a day.  The more junk and processed foods we eat, the less nutrition we are actually feeding our body.  It is not good enough to just quantify the amount of any nutrient in the foodstuffs we eat, but we need to learn how to get the whole part of the food, including the enzymes and phytochemicals.  Cooking, freezing and process destroy these things.

In addition, if we want to stop killing ourselves with high medical bills, we need to cut back on the amount of sugar, salt, high fructose corn syrup, fat and other ingredients that are not healthy for our body.  They were not made for our body to consume in quantities that we do.  In order to do this, we need to begin reading the labels on all foodstuffs we buy because you will be quite surprised at what is in the products you buy.

Of course exercise is something that is often lacking, especially in this day of electronics.  An occasional visit to the fitness center or a walk down the block is good, but it should be a regular part of our day.  We all spend way too much time in front of a computer, at a desk, or in front of a TV and this is not healthy for our body.

The biggest thing that I think we need to do to stop killing ourselves with high medical bills, is learning how stress, trauma, and fear impact our physical body, our biology, and how we live in our life.  Fear, stress, and trauma is part of our existence, but when we fail to deal with these things on a regular basis, there will come a time when it deals with us.  I personally believe through my own experiences, that this is the single most important factor in the health of our body.  Without dealing with these things, we will only experience life in a small way, but if we begin to learn and understand how stress and fear impact our life, we will open up the possibilities.

Turning to a medication or medical procedure without asking ourselves what is going on in our life is a quest in futility.  Yes, we can mask and temporarily rid the body of the health conditions and chronic pain we may be experiencing, but until we deal with it fully, it will show up in some other way.  These things are messages from our body to stop and evaluate the choices we are making in our lives.  If we heed these messages and begin asking questions, we will find that the body has an extraordinary capacity to heal itself.  If we ignore these messages, we will be part of the problem of high medical bills and a healthcare system that is slowly killing us.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2/28/13 by Don Shetterly

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