Revisiting Healthcare as Commodity: With Implications for the Opioid and Other Epidemics

In the past six months or so, I’ve witnessed two friends experiencing finger injuries that required suturing. Both were attended to quite well. One of them, a woman, required sutures at a nearby hospital and was attended to by a physician. She disregarded the instructions and her sutures needed to be redone at a different hospital. The other friend, a man, received treatment at a nearby hospital and was treated by a nurse practitioner team who, under medical advice, took over the case and used one of the new surgical glues, which provided excellent results. However, he complained of the result and had to be discouraged from going to the hospital touted by the first patient, the woman. Both of these people are extremely bright and use the internet often and well. It occurs to me that they were judging the outcome by the same standards that they would judge a car or a refrigerator by, minimizing the importance of compliance with instruction and treating the care they received as though it were a commodity.

Health and fitness are being defined by gyms and related sites, which often use the attractiveness of youth and sexuality as a substitute for age-related indices. Some of these places offer inducements to the young and attractive to join and serve effectively as eye candy.

Internet access to medical-related sites is a double-edged sword. Some sites are responsible and ethical, while others are not and serve to peddle medications and devices. Devices are often useful, measuring pulse and respiration, etc., but recent studies find that they can produce both anxiety and unjustifiable confidence. Physician review opportunities are offered by many sites as an opportunity for physicians to respond to criticisms, but many of the criticisms result from the office staff’s behavior or the physician’s gruff manner. This makes it difficult for physicians to respond to low ratings and it also carries the risk of the reply confirming the reviewer’s criticism, given the stress on a physician's time.

My Addiction Treatment (MAT) summary is now widely used for individuals to carry reminders and clues to share and follow while struggling with an addictive disorder (mainly opioids). This brings us full circle to the growing national and international problem with addiction. Some people link the motive of profit and physicians’ greed and callousness as the sole cause of the epidemic, but this is not sufficient enough.

The happiest nations on earth are those where people can enjoy their basic needs and enjoy the success and comfort of their neighbors. And, physicians are often paid when people are healthy. This setting, however, cannot be brought into being if geographical boundaries, like state and county lines, redefine access and treatability. Malaise and discontent, as well as a search for mood elevation, can go past these boundaries and account for a large part of the opioid and intoxicant epidemic.

Increasing your knowledge about issues and realizing that the utilization of your tax money should not be left to the sole discretion of politicians and lobbyists is more important than ever. Issues such as air pollution and its relationship to asthma need to be understood. This week the general assembly of the World Health Organization is presenting in Geneva their recommendations for reducing pollution in areas where asthma and lung-related issues are prominent. This is taking place while our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is denying the relationship between industrial emissions and pulmonary disease.

I believe that the truth should not be determined by geographical boundary, nor political sentiment. Health care is a seminal issue that Americans need to focus on. If it leads to more political involvement than anticipated, then so be it!