Sarah Morgan
When pharmaceutical marketers and MDs are caught saying the same thing, that can be a little surprising. They’re not always on the same side of the fence.
When what they’re saying is that doctors need to stop and change the way they work, that can be even more startling.
But they are. See those links.
Healthcare needs to become about caring about health. Not maneuvering managed care. Not prescribing pills. It needs to become the art of figuring out what’s with a person – physically, mentally, emotionally, environmentally – and helping them smooth out the places where that web’s gotten tangled.
Of course, healthcare will always also be about solving emergencies. Accidents happen. Things break. But we have, for generations, tried to throw prescriptions at problems that need solutions that are bigger and further back.
Sometimes, pills just address symptoms, and more often than not, symptoms are just red flags pointing to the actual problem. Hiding the flags doesn’t make the problem disappear.
A pill might help symptoms of type 2 diabetes, but figuring out how a person in today’s world can eat and drink and exercise healthily, and sustain that, is what needs doing.
A pill might help symptoms of depression, but figuring out why a person in today’s world is overwhelmed and lonely and miserable, and how they can figure out what those feelings are saying needs to be fixed, is what needs doing.
Let me be clear. I’m not anti-pharma. I’ve worked in the industry for 16 years and I’m not exaggerating when I say I love it. And I take a pill every morning to stay alive. The healthcare industry works miracles, very literally. I thank God every day it exists and I get to be a part of it.
But the public had come to think of medicine as a substitute for health – a divergent destination, not a path. We aren’t living lives the way they’re meant to be lived. We need help to fix that. And it’s so wonderful to be here, now, as we begin to realize that and work to recreate an industry that can do that.
