The Long term effects of practicing Medicine in a Hurry
Fast- food businesses do a lavishly profitable job selling hamburgers, hot dogs, and fries. But operating the health system as a fast food business is a losing enterprise when it comes to preventing diseases, mental illnesses and addictions even if very profitable in the short run.
Such a health system focuses on costly interventions that enrich few people but fails to help society’s many. It fails to observe the time honored wisdom that prevention is better than cure. The result is a modern society like ours that is spared the anguish of war in its soil but where both rich and poor are affected by the disastrous effects of unaddressed mental health problems, violence, drug and alcohol addictions, teen pregnancies, juvenile delinquencies, obesity related diseases, and sexually transmitted diseases.
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) which are the official estimates of total health care spending in the United reports that the “U.S. health care spending grew 3.6 percent in 2013, reaching $2.9 trillion or $9,255 per person.”
A Forbes Feb 2,2014 article by Dan Munro reported
“Annual U.S. Healthcare Spending Hits $ 3.8 Trillion.”
Few Trillions a year and still lagging behind in many essential areas of patient care!
One wonders, where is the money?
And why is our society suffering from a multitude of preventable diseases, and a torrent of addictions, poverty, broken lives, violence, and mental illness despite all this massive amounts of money. Why isn’t this money sufficient enough to reverse the above pile of human ailments and sufferings?
What about America’s veterans? 
How well are they helped in dealing with their vast array of physical and emotional ills and suffering?
Are they faring any better than the rest of America’s sick who are cared for by our modernized American health care system?
Our combat Veterans who have experienced indescribable war trauma with ensuing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) won’t and can’t find real and long lasting help for their physical and emotional illnesses with America’s new brand of quick, fast- food-speedy-Gonzalez style of medical care. A combat veteran’s complex medical, mental and spiritual needs are deep and can be very overwhelming.
Today’s “In and Out”, rushed, and profit oriented medical care can’t begin to scratch the surface of their needs. And their only hope is to find compassionate, caring, excellent, and unhurried medical care just as Abraham Lincoln envisioned for them.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”
Abraham Lincoln
Second inaugural address: March 4,1865 ( addressed to the nation about a month before the Civil War ended and his tragic assassination)
Lincoln’s words ” To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan” uttered over 150 years ago to a nation devastated by the Civil War became the VA’s motto in 1959.
His heartfelt and genuine words uttered in 1865 to America’s veterans and the families of those who died in the battlefields are still a breath of fresh air to those who fought and survived the war zones of WW11, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and others. They’re words that have comforted and still comfort those warriors, and the families of the millions who have perished in the war zones..
In our fast pace, highly priced medical care with electronic medical records, fast Internet access, and unimaginable technology that baffles the imagination how well are we taking care of those who survived the trauma of war since Lincoln’s memorable words?
If Lincoln is allowed to peak from heaven as one of those in the “cloud of witness” mentioned in this encouraging Biblical verse “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” Hebrews 12:1 (ESV), what would he be thinking about?
How would he view our modern, speedy and costly medical health care that is meant “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan”
Lincoln’s heart desire and intention was to see his beloved survivors of war horrors heal physically and emotionally. To him healing the wounds of war couldn’t have been about profitably or the numbers ( large quantities treated in a hurry without genuine care or comfort, time or quality) but about helping veterans heal and supporting the families of those who perished.
In essence, his words were similar to Jesus’ comforting words of love, healing, and compassion to those suffering and in need. For such is the way you and I would like to be treated if we happened to be survivors of war combats, and that’s how we want and yearn to see our families taken care of if we were to perish in the loneliness of a battlefield.
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 7:12 (ESV)
The Golden Rule
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 G Hanna, MD
Author: Soldier to Soldier, Heart to Heart
A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp
Blog: www.adelhanna.com
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