Integrative Care? The Door is Open to Doom

Year's ago, what is now known by some buzz words like 'alternative', 'complementary', or the most recent 
'integrative', used to be the norm.

We had what was really collaborative health care.

People knew what they could do and when they could not do something that was best for a patient they automatically collaborated with another health care provider, professional or ancillary.

Then along came HMOs and managed care, and now here we are.  Another "back to the future" moment.

While it may be a little better for those with health insurance to get some out of the mainstream care, it will still be the Big Insurance providers wielding the pen.  And the pen will say 'yea' or 'nay'.

Now for example, chiropractors are allowed to bill for a limited number of visits.  Other "integrative " approaches are in the same category.  And it seems a doctor has to refer you, so you really don't have a choice of your own making.  Because of the referral charges your cost will be higher.

It has been interesting to watch over the decades that I have been involved with providing natural health care as a nurse practitioner in hospitals and other settings.  I've always stayed outside the insurance framework in private practice so that has been interesting too because what I do hasn't been limited or controlled.   And, consider too that with my focus on public health, I have always relied on the collaborative model.  Referrals are good.


One thing for sure, all this will soon be controlled under doctors as they are scrambling to get certified in "integrative" care, to keep the market place in their hands.


And just as standards of care for pharmaceutical treatment for your condition is now the cookie cutter approach you get, believe me, this will come along in some form to the "integrators".

Only now it will become Cookie Cutter integrative medicine with "condition specific supplements".

By the way, that model is NOT natural health care!


Your best insurance, get some good education from a true expert.

NO to Forced Purchase of Health Insurance

While I am strongly committed to health care access for all as is available in most countries outside the US, I think this ruling is one to be strongly evaluated.

First of all why must insurance, especially in a plan largely written by the insurance and pharmaceutical industry be rammed down the throats of selected groups of people?

Secondly, most media outlets are not giving much coverage to the groups that are exempted from this proposal.  Members of Congress are excluded and to me this is the most flagrant abuse in the legislation.

There are other concerns too but I want to stick with an example of employment based insurance.

In an NPR report related to the court ruling there was a discussion of the "boomers" in age 50-64.  Right now many are unemployed, lacking coverage, and lacking employment opportunities because so many of the Republicans in Congress sent jobs from their political crony corporations out of the country, and for the most part are responsible for NAFTA and GATT.

A health policy instructor at a California university mentioned in the report that it is just the 50-64 age group that is at highest risk of developing chronic health conditions like the heart attack that left a 59 year old man with $94 thousand in debt.  He'd also been unemployed for 5 years.

This college instructor also mentioned that most chronic health conditions start appearing around age 64.

Certainly a better way to see this is to see that there is no inclusion of natural health options in the health insurance reform bill.

There is talk about "integrative" care but this model  has quickly become a copy cat of the AMA model, only the "prescriptions" are a bit different, but it is still a tightly controlled arena.  They want this limited to the few who have 'licensening'.

What you hear so little about is prevention and true natural therapies.

The traditional natural health care approach has been keeping people well for h undreds of years.  You can find out more here. We have been helping people be well and stay well in a toxic world for decades naturally and during the decades as a nurse practitioner.

Key healthcare provision voided by federal judge

A requirement that Americans buy insurance — the central provision of Obama's signature domestic achievement — is unconstitutional, the ruling says.


December 13, 2010
By Noam N. Levey and David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau Reporting from Washington — Declaring a core part of the new healthcare law unconstitutional, a federal judge in Virginia has launched President Obama's signature domestic achievement into a gantlet of conservative-leaning courts that will almost certainly conclude at the Supreme Court just as the 2012 election is cresting.

In the first such decision since Obama signed the law in March, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson ruled Monday that Congress had overstepped its power in requiring Americans to get health insurance by 2014.

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