An Insight from Ezekiel on the Health Care fiasco in America

Today, I suppose I am going to sound like a preacher. But when the spirit is the problem, perhaps preaching is in order. I was reading Ezekiel the other day and a verse jumped out at me. Ezekiel is upset with Tyre, and ancient nation that is known to be wonderfully productive, but the explanation he gives for its downfall is very revealing. Ezekiel 28:18 says: You defiled your holiness with lust for gain; therefore I brought forth fire from your own actions and let it burn you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all those watching you. This translation is from The Living Bible, but I could not think of a better way to explain exactly what is wrong with health care in America. It started out a holy and sacred duty to care for the weak and helpless, but the lust for gain that is extant in it now (often under the name of innovation) is actually burning up the system from the inside out. There is no new thing under the sun. If you depend on services to the weak to provide your wealth, it will backfire on you. The weak don't actually have wealth.

In the Fall 2010 health care news letter from a local hospital I found an excellent example of how what Ezekiel says happens. The article is about the recent practice of cooling a person to promote self healing after a major cardiac crisis. I will not name the devise, but the article indicated that instead of ice packs and water blankets this medical devise system allows precise body temperature control. In case you did not catch it, ice packs are cheap, and this brand name, probably patented system is available for who knows what cost from your local health supply salesman who gets a cut for his or her sale which comes with very bright advertisement brochures, and you can see how the cost gets higher and higher. Now you might counter that science needs precision, and the doctor deserves the tool that makes the practice most predictable. But where does this stop? As soon as the precision tool instead of the care taking practice (ice bags) becomes the standard, then the doctors who try to treat for less cost begin to be held liable for not actually maintaining a strict temperature when they could have, and even if no law suits are ever brought over body temperature, insurance companies will require higher standards for all. The simple availability of medical innovations is like a built in way to create new liability because the standard of care changes with what is possible in the market instead of what is possible for the patient. Health care is too expensive because we have demanded that only expensive health care be practiced. This demand is due to a delusion that only expensive care is real care, but delusional as it is, the most expensively controlled care (dependant on machines and data instead of human observation and care) is what is driving us over the cliff on health care. When I was in Jr. High I remember little story illustrations encouraging us to be content in life. These stories usually talked about a great struggle to get to the top and then once there the discovery that there was nothing up there. Our health care monetary practices are about the opposite. Everyone is reaching to this bottomless pit where they believe great wealth exists if they can just get down there, and when they do, there is nothing there. Or to put it Ezekiel's way, burned by your own actions.