I am a huge fan of Canada's approach to healthcare. If you are ill or hurt in an accident you need only think of trying to get well and not if this will mean that you will be bankrupt.
But is it now sustainable? At the current rate of growth in load, on PEI the budget will be about 2 billion in 10 years time. That is an impossible number for us to absorb.
So what to do? Of course, the search for more efficiency will take place and is worth while. But for me the area that we have to look at is what is driving the demand and can we see a better and less expensive way.
Take for instance the current fuss from the orthopedic Dr's. The ortho doctors on PEI are in revolt - too much to do and not enough resources. The focus of the debate is resources. They need more time and support in the OR. This is how all the resources debate is set.
But I think that the debate should be - "Why are so many people needing this surgery?" I myself have toyed with the idea with a bad right knee. Are bad knees a "normal" part of getting older? If so then as we all age, the demand will rocket.
Or it is it the case - it was for me - that many who need new knees are overweight? I have lost 30 pounds and my need for new knee has gone. Take a back pack and put 30 lbs of books in it and walk around for a week. You will see what I mean.
Say I did have my knee fixed and I then did nothing about my weight. What then? In maybe 10 years I would be back for another one. And then if I did nothing. I would then be crippled because you can only get 2.
Who helped me lose all this weight? My GP is not paid to help me lose weight. She is paid to prescribe or refer. Our system is geared to react in a transactional way to illness or ill health - not to help us get well.
Take Type 2 Diabetes. As well as having a bad knee, I was on the road to get type 2 diabetes. I had all the markers. It was only a matter of time. My markers for heart disease would also have shown up. What then would my Dr have done? She would have put me on medication that would keep me alive but not well. 1/3 of Islanders are set to get type 2 diabetes as they reach my age.
This is what it will cost us in demand.
Diabetes drives many other conditions including cardiovascular disease. On PEI adults in 2006 with diabetes had to be hospitalized much more often than those without it. 16 times more often for lower limb amputations. 6 times more often with kidney disease. They had 5 times more heart attacks. 4 times more heart failure. 3 times more strokes. They stayed 3 times longer in hospital. Had 2 times more visits to physicians and 2 times more to specialists. (Source Health PEI)
Most diabetics don’t just take one medication, but several. A typical regimen for an adult diabetic after a couple of years of treatment and following the dietary advice of the American Diabetes Association includes Metformin, Januvia, and Actos, a triple-drug treatment that costs around $420 per month. Two forms of insulin (slow- and fast-acting), along with two or three oral medications, is not at all uncommon.
In 10 years time 1/3 of Islanders will have this.
The result is that the average male Islander is helpless by 65 and lives like this for nearly 10 more years.
Is this just normal? Is it really normal to get so ill as we age? No it's not.
When most of us were young, we could hide this problem of not looking at why we get ill and working there. We could have a system that reacted WHEN we got ill.
Other than telling each other to eat better and take more exercise - other than blaming people for being stupid or lazy, we have not worked hard enough to help us take charge of our health.
Of course there is huge vested interest in you and I being ill too. So much of the information about what will help you take charge and get well is obscured or worse wrong.
This is why I have set up my own site - The Missing Human Manual - to help others learn how to take charge.
I am encouraged to find so much science out there that shows us how to take charge. The barrier is our own minds and beliefs. For years my wife begged me to lose weight and get fit and I thought that this was impossible. But I got a bad fright and then met someone - Michael Rose - who showed me the science for how to get control.
What really convinced me was my own body's feedback. Within 6 weeks I was a new person. I had to keep going back to the mirror to see this stranger look back at me. I also felt so much better. I did not need more formal evidence - my own body was telling me that this was working.
Many of you too think I am mad today. I understand. I would have been one of you too.
Peter Rukavina advised me back in 2002 to start blogging and told me where to go to get a tool that I could use. I took his advice and it changed my life. There were just a village of us bloggers then - maybe 50 - 60,000 in all. What we were doing seemed mad to everyone else. Now it is the new normal.
My hope is that what you thinki is my current madness will too seem like your new normal in 5 years time. For if it does not - what then?
If all we do is to treat after the the health breakdoen - then what?
