The Golden Rule and Medical Care
Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets
Matthew 7:12 (NKJV)
The frightening thing about a hidden iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean, or a vicious African lion hiding in an African bush awaiting its prey, is the unexpected horrid suddenness of one’s demise. Like the prophets of ancient times who sounded off the alarms warning of the impending doom of nations for their dismissal and sidestepping of God’s moral code, today’s learned medical care prognosticators are doing something similar. They’re repeatedly sounding the warning alarms on the direction that our medical health system is heading to.
The National Research Council (US); Institute of Medicine (US). Edited by Steven H Woolf and Laudan Aron report is one of the alarms that reiterate these facts:
“Much of the poor health outcomes and premature mortality is due to other nonmedical causes — such as behavioral choices like drug and alcohol abuse, a built environment that favors auto travel at the expense of exercise, and dietary habits.”
Other loud- sounding alarms include:
Those sounding off on physicians’ burnout by a health system that’s constantly adding to them more and more unattainable loads, expectations, and financial burdens
And others that are repeatedly sounding off on the vices of shorter and shorter doctors -patients office visits, and the decline of skilled and experienced primary care providers due to early retirement and the transitioning of many of them to part time work load.
Here’s another loud alarm warning of the impending future medical health care thunderstorm:
“The health challenges that we face right now are too big to be solved by the traditional health sector alone. We can’t build more hospitals and clinics and, solely based on that, expect that we are going to solve the health challenges that we face.
Many of the patients that I saw came in with illnesses and conditions that were preventable. And that’s not an experience that’s unique to me. Doctors all across the country, nurses across the country, share similar stories of feeling a great deal of sadness when they see the pain and the suffering that patients and their families go through, and realize that if we had a system that could care for people better, that was actually more focused on prevention than our current system, that we may be able to prevent a lot of the illness, the suffering and the health care costs that we see in our current world.”
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants to move U.S. health care toward a ‘prevention-based society’
By Lanny Bernstein, April 23, Washington Post
The message seems clear: The less time doctors and primary care providers are allowed by America’s health system to listen, diagnose, support, educate, and encourage behavioral change the poorer the outcome, and the sicker society becomes.
It’s truly an irony that the areas where the American Health System lags behind, despite the multi billions of dollars it costs, are medical care areas that America’s doctors and medical providers are passionate about and well trained to address. 
Sadly, the areas of “birth outcomes, injuries and homicides, teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, drug-related mortality, obesity and diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and disability,” in addition to behavioral choices such as drug and alcohol abuse, exercise, and dietary habits can’t be addressed adequately in today’s fast- food style of medical health care.
In brief, our American Health System has set its mission and goal to operate as an efficient and lucrative business, a lean and mean machine if you will, where time is money, and profitability is the bottom line.
And in the process it abandoned the ancient wisdom of
“an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
How is the VA system in its mission of caring for America’s veterans faring when compared to America’s health care industry?
Join me in the next blog as I explore how the wisdom of the Golden Rule can change our medical care, and improve for the best our soldiers and veterans’ physical and mental health.
And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.
Luke 6:31 (NKJV)
Advice and recommendations offered here are not meant to replace your medical provider’s individual evaluation, diagnosis and treatment. Please see your medical provider for any physical or emotional concerns.
Views expressed here are only of the author, and do not represent the views of any other organization or entity.
Adel Gobran Hanna, M.D.
Author: Soldier to Soldier, Heart to Heart
A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp
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