A spate of recent news events, including the killing of a healthcare CEO this past December, has put the U.S. healthcare system under the spotlight. This latest round of scrutiny points to one glaring and now unavoidable fact: our healthcare system is broken. Chronic pain is the proverbial poster child for a system that needs to be thoroughly torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.
Billions of people suffer from chronic pain, according to the NY Times. The CDC pegs the U.S. number at 51.6 million adults. In addition, 17.1 million of those adults live with high-impact chronic pain – pain that substantially restricts daily activities. And how does our healthcare system help? It does not, for the most part.
Traditional Treatments That Don’t Work
American medicine is pharmaceutically based. In simple terms, this means clinical decisions are made based on the traditional treatments recommended by pharmaceutical companies. Those treatments are largely ineffective for chronic pain. They include:
Pain Medication – Pain medication can take the edge off until pain resolves itself, but it is largely ineffective for chronic pain. Chronic pain patients eventually tire of their medications and how those medications make them feel.
Surgeries – Chronic pain patients might be given the option for surgery if medication doesn’t do the trick. But invasive surgeries are not a panacea. They do not work for a lot of people. And for some, post-surgical pain is worse than the original pain.
Pain medications are designed to mask pain. Surgery is designed to correct some sort of physical deformity. When neither works, what is next for the chronic pain patient? Is a life of misery the only option?
Deny, Deny, And Deny Some More
If chronic pain were not bad enough, patients also need to deal with uncooperative insurance companies. The fact of the matter is that healthcare decisions are made by insurance companies, not clinicians. Insurance companies hold the purse strains. And because they do, they call the shots.
Insurance companies are particularly good at denying treatments. They are masters at denying claims. They deny, deny, and then deny some more. This leaves chronic pain patients in a state of helplessness and hopelessness. They see no way out. They have little to no hope for a better life.
Put Patients in Charge Again
So what’s the solution to our broken healthcare system? Putting patients in charge again. That is the way it used to be before the introduction of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) in the 1970s. Back then, health insurance was major medical coverage. Patients and their doctors made decisions irrespective of what health insurance executives wanted or thought.
Lone Star Pain Medicine in Weatherford, Texas operates on the principle of patients being actively involved in their own healthcare. Their goal of improving life, one patient at a time, emphasizes patient education, patient involvement in decision making, and access to treatments that do not fall under the traditional pharmaceutical model.
Lone Star is among a growing number of pain clinics offering patients alternate treatments like nerve blocks, ablation, prolotherapy, and regenerative medicine. They give the victims of a broken healthcare system alternatives to managing chronic pain. They have their detractors within the healthcare system, but they also treat untold numbers of patients who swear by them.
It is clear that our healthcare system is broken. It is broken because insurance companies are in charge. If you suffer from chronic pain, you know exactly what I have been writing about. Chronic pain is the poster child for a system in desperate need of a complete overhaul.
