While eating lunch the other day, I saw a news clip on CNN that was talking about bargain shopping for health insurance...and it got me thinking about something...

Value - Worth, in usefulness or importance; an amount considered to be a fair equivalent for something else.

Two definitions, similar and different in many ways.  Particularly in our society, value is often equated with money and exchanging it for services or goods of some kind.  Yet, we are taught from an early age that core values have nothing to do with money.  For instance, the value that you place on your parents, friends, spouse, children, or pets cannot be measured monetarily.  Those things have a different kind of a value that transcends the exchange of money and service. 

People involved in the various healing arts used to transcend monetary exchange, as well.  Once upon time, doctors' motives were to get patients well.  Patients came to the see the doctor to get well.  Somewhere along the line, that value system has been blurred to where patients must now relate the value of a doctor's services to money; and subsequently a doctor is forced to do the same.  If not well, a patient has to weigh their financial options before being able to do something about their health.  That's the sad reality.  Doctors, meanwhile, are forced to view what they do as just as much business as service.  Another sad reality. 

When you are involved in an "alternative" form of health care, you must create a value for something out of nothing.  Such is my job.  Upper Cervical Care is something that hardly anyone has heard about.  Chiropractic is something that they've heard about, and the term carries with it a negative connotation for many people...even people that have never experienced it.  Call it an old school mindset, if you will, but "cracking backs" isn't exactly something that people associate with health.  So, in teaching a new paradigm, I have to establish a value for it. 

It's just a shame that health care, in general, has to be so much more about money than health.  Look at the Italian (and European, in general) health care system, where the Surgeon General recently endorsed Upper Cervical Healthcare as a major part of Italy's healthcare system.  That's incredible...that really goes to show you where their priorities are.  They don't shy away from something different just because it's something different.  It might very well cause a fundamental shift in that country that takes the focus of the medical system away from medications, costing people that are a part of that system money...but it's not about money to them...it's about the best way to get people well and keep them well.  And that's amazing that there's a healthcare system out there that places the value on people's HEALTH instead of their wallets...

While we're arguing here in the States about how to get people better access to our "disease" care system that has been failing people for years, they are making huge changes/reforms to their system.  You have to admire that...

So, as a conclusion to this short and sweet edition of Weekly Well-Being, I want you to consider that, in order to really reform healthcare, we need to find a way to make it valuable in the sense of its importance rather than its monetary exchange rate.

Thinking good things for you, as always,

Dr. Chad