Article archive / November 2019
Originally published: . Volume 10, No. 11. Source pages: 2.
If you take Louisiana's rank in health outcomes and correlate it with Louisiana's rank in medical costs per capita, you get an r of –1.0.
Maybe every other or third year it's –.9, because Mississippi or Alabama beats us out of the bottom spot in health outcomes. But it's clear that either way, things are miserably off track in Louisiana's "Health Care System."
The system is paralleled by the United States. Nationally we exhibit the same pattern– highest in cost and last or nearly last in health outcomes when compared to the list of industrialized countries.
The equation suggests the real goal of the current system is not the publicized goal, and the strength of the relationship also suggests lots of resistance to change.
What's a consumer of services of this type of system to do? It would not be unreasonable given these statistics to avoid the current healthcare system altogether. Or, do the opposite of what your healthcare practitioner recommends, especially if inexpensive! Add to this the finding that medical errors are the third reason for death, and you have quite a system to contend with.
Like the pregnant, laboring women in olden days who became hysterical with fear when assigned to the physicians instead of the midwives. Everybody knew it could be a death sentence to be attended to by the physicians (who regularly transferred infections to birthing women from the cadavers of the sick). Run like hell in the opposite direction, would have been good advice. Have your baby in a field!
At the Louisiana Psychological Association workshop on health psychology, Dr. Bonnie Kaplan brought to bear convincing theory and research, deductive and inductive reasoning, to show that not only mental illness but all physical health should start with curing nutritional deficiencies. At best, we ingest only 50% of the nutrients we need, so these deficiencies are a given in our modern society.
Dr. Linda Brannon said it in a beautifully succinct manner that the healthcare system we now have was designed over half a century ago to solve problems and diseases that are now solved for the most part. The system we need is a completely new one for today’s health problems.
Where does this leave psychology? Kaplan shows us that we all must be thought leaders and change agents ––not an easy role. Psychology can use our scientific methods, our statistical reasoning, our rigorous training in the science of behavior, to move beyond the poor judgments that plague human problem-solving.
We can help change this mess. We can work from outside the r = –1.0 system.
We'll need to reestablish the link to our best most innovative thinkers, hone ourselves to the task, and get out of politics that muddy our scientific thinking. We'll need a stronger collective voice. And, we need to accept that blowback is a normal result of being a disruptor type change agent. Just as Dr. Kaplan said– systems don't like to change, but hang on– it will get better.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.