Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about all the changes that need to be made in the healthcare industry.  My family spent close to six grand last year on insurance we never used (because we are really healthy), and if we do have to use it, there is still a &7500/ person/yr deductible that we have to meet.  And my rates go up every year.  I am also frustrated with the skewed view people have of what healthcare is supposed to mean, that when they feel sick doctors must fix them with no concern for financial remuneration their part, because they have “insurance”.   There is a dangerous sense of entitlement out there that has caused an abdication of personal responsibility for what it takes to live a healthy life.  It’s frustrating to try and explain to people how the present system doesn’t help them get or stay healthy.  So much of allopathic (drugs or surgery) is based on avoiding discomfort and finding ways to mask symptoms instead of locating the pathology and help people to make the necessary changes to not only alleviate it, but come out even better on the other end.  Every day people ask us why we don’t take their insurance…and every day I try to explain to them why we don’t dance with that particular devil.  Face it, healthcare or sick care is in the business for profit…and they profit when you get sick and are dependent on them.  I don’t blame people for being sick, but I do challenge them to stop tolerating a system that does not support the health of it’s subscribers and won’t allow doctors, like my husband, to do their jobs well and assist people to make the necessary changes to have optimum health and compensate them fairly for it.  In all truthfulness, with some insurance contracts we would lose money to treat people with even just a basic adjustment.  Even though healthcare premiums increase every year, our compensation per adjustment goes down, so much so that we lose money every time a senior citizen walks in our door. (And as an aside, we will continue to accept Medicare because we love our seniors).  When one very frustrated gentleman couldn’t understand, on his explanation of benefits from medicare, that they only covered 1/4 of the cost, where the rest of it went.  When I told him that it just disappeared, he was awestruck.  I think he was surprised because he simply believed that we were raking in all the dough.  We’re not.  Even though our clinic is always busy, we’re suffering like the rest of this country just to cover our overhead.  But Steve and I firmly believe that what you put out into the world will eventually come back to you tenfold.  If we all learned how to stay healthy, the dependency on sickness care would dissipate enough that we would be able to press new wine and not taint it by putting it into old wineskins.  An appropriate metaphor for me, since the old structure reeks with decay and is full of holes.  We have so many wonderful advancements in medicine…that deserve a new and better structure.  And we will all have to work to pay for it, not only fiscally but by changing our lifestyles and learning to be healthy.  From a spiritual vantage point, our bodies, the temple of our spirit, should be worth it…in or out of network….