The health care industry is astoundingly confounding to me. As a nation, more than 75% of our health care spending is on people with chronic conditions. It is well known that chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. It is also understood that four modifiable (aka "you can do something …
Tag: health care
Revolutionizing Health Care
As a private pilot who has spent the better part of my professional life navigating the labyrinthine health care industry, I am intrigued by Dr. Marty Makary's recent comparison of aviation and health care in the Wall Street Journal, adapted from his book "Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care": …
Getting the Facts Straight
There are many ways to solve virtually every problem we face as a species. Solutions can range from simple to complex, from short-term fix to long-term repair and may be crude or elegant. Any societal problem you might examine, be it education, health care or fiscal health, can be brought examined, debated and fixed in …
Dehumanization in Medicine
Humanism is the foundation of medicine. This sacred art is altruistic at its core and those drawn to the field of medicine are among the most caring and empathetic people I've had the privilege to meet. A number of longitudinal studies of physicians show that their empathy is at its peak in the early days …
A New Health Paradigm
Not too long ago what the world now knows as Western conventional medicine didn't exist. While conventional medicine is a newborn compared to the Eastern systems of medicine, several of which have been in use for many thousands of years, its rapid ascension to becoming an internationally recognized standard is worthy of note. Three advances …
The Elegant Solution
Having been moving through one of the most layered and complex "cold/flu" bugs I've ever come across over the course of the last week, I cannot help but give thought and credit to one of the greatest marvels of creation: the immune system. The immune system is one of the most complex and interesting systems …
Life is Trusteeship
"Trusteeship is one of the great words of life because it concentrates in a single expression the essence of all true living. It inspires man with the revelation of his constant relation to himself, to all others and to the Infinite. It gives a royal dignity to life, making man, not a mere isolated individual, …
Reunion
Last evening I had the rare pleasure of being reunited with an old and dear friend from my university years. Our friendship was forged not just at school, in fact he and a few friends and I went on a volunteer vacation in West Virginia where we spent our holiday renovating a poverty-stricken neighborhood. We …
No when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em
I read an article yesterday morning that stood out to me as being a particularly clear example of how we as a society can end up pouring good money after bad, for an apparently good reason. We are on the verge of a health crisis. I'm not speaking of health care reform, but instead of …
The Over-care of Health
Nothing is more fatal to Health, than an over Care of it. ~ Benjamin Franklin For whatever reason, many human beings tend toward obsessive-cumpulsive behavior. For example, being in the health care industry I find that I must take great care not to become imbalanced in my perspective about my own health, for fanaticism eventually …
Gregory Hake 