Under Our Skin (2008)

Just saw a documentary that expanded my understanding of what we are up against with regard to resistance within the US health care/provider community to properly manage patients and treat disease.

 Be sure to watch: Under Our Skin (2008). It’s currently available to be watched for free at Netflix or at Amazon.com.

 In the case of cancer, a huge treatment industry exists in the form of treatment facilities and manufacturers of treatment equipment and pharmaceuticals – all financially motivated to maintain the status quo and resist even considering anything other than highly expensive protocols currently deemed to be normative and conventional. Insurance companies would no doubt prefer to instead pay claims for much less expensive “alternative” treatment protocols, but they lack the power and influence to make that happen.

 But in the case of the rapidly emerging Lyme disease epidemic, a huge industry of treatment facilities and medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies does not exist – there is no treatment establishment to fight for the status quo. So the insurance companies wield the power and are able to resist acknowledging the existence of Lyme disease in a chronic form and avoid paying long term treatment claims.

 In both cases the “establishment” is doing exactly what shareholders in a capitalistic society expect it to do – maximize shareholder value. But in both cases the cost is high – caring but unconventional doctors are being persecuted, innovation is being stifled, and the public is being very poorly served.

 I would like to think that, over time, a more rational response to these diseases will evolve. Were these markets free and unfettered by so much government regulation they might evolve quickly. But encumbered as they are, it’s likely to take decades, if at all.