Dr. Marcel Hernandez, ND
The American health care system has two faces. On the one hand, it is capable of providing excellent emergency and critical care. On the other, it can be controlling, bossy, and overly concerned with treating symptoms instead of addressing the possible deeper causes of disease.
Yes, the system’s imperfections are frustrating. So long as medicine is operated as a business, driven by profit margins, fear of litigation, and the powerful influence of Big Pharma, the morass will only get deeper and thicker.
I personally knew a former head of the California Medical Board, who once famously (or infamously) said: “Our job is to identify and prosecute those medical doctors who stray from the standard of practice.”
And he did so, even to the extent of raiding the offices of physicians who practiced integrative medicine, and confiscating vials of Vitamin B-12.
The “standard of practice” in conventional medicine is forged by pharmaceutical and health insurance companies whose medical decisions are controlled by accountants and lawyers.
Yet, deeply flawed as it is, conventional medicine offers diagnostic channels, emergency services, and therapeutic approaches that save lives.
Imagine if you were living today in Cuba, where I was born, and you contracted a life-threatening disease. My beloved cousin Maritza is in this situation. She is presently near death, suffering from an aggressive cancer.
In Cuba, there is no medicine to alleviate her suffering – she is relying on Tylenol that we brought her last year during a visit. There is only one radiation therapy machine on her part of the Island, many miles away. Forget about chemotherapeutic agents. Basic, essential items such as anesthesia, sterile gloves, syringes, over-the-counter medicines, and almost everything else are simply not available. A few medicines are distributed by the central government once a week to local pharmacies, with people lining up many hours in advance for the opportunity to purchase anything that might help them address their health concerns.
Returning now to the U.S. – we have a vast array of opportunities to address our medical needs. What’s lacking is the opportunity to conduct our own research and find doctors and other resources that will address our issues with the maximum effectiveness and the fewest side effects. Naturopathic doctors, as the originators of integrative medicine, do this very well.
Be smart. Seek guidance. “A wise person has many counselors.” Develop your own personalized team of advisors, drawn from the conventional and integrative worlds.
Your team might include conventional physicians, a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, spiritual and psychological counselors, bodywork specialists, an Ayurvedic practitioner, etc.
Except for emergency situations, don’t base your health care decisions on input from just one source. Be grateful that you have options, even if you must sort through the opposing views to arrive at informed decisions that will best serve your specific needs.
This is the path to receiving effective health care in the American medical system today.
Drs. Connie and Marcel Hernandez
DrConnie@DrsHernandez.com
DrMarcel@DrsHernandez.com