Big Picture Healthcare Articles

Every year, we gain new knowledge about medicine, disease management and women's health. 2005 brought more biotech to market, and more choices for aging baby boomers. Here are the top 3 advances for woman's health in 2005.

(1.) Medical discoveries linked to biotech, genomics and protein synthesis offer large benefits to women's health. (The down side is very few of us have $20,000 a month for these drugs, when they come to market. Better be a high paying executive or a government employee, or these treatments may be out of reach).

(2.) Thermography, as both a diagnostic technique and a pain relief protocol, also is great news for women (early detection of cancers, as well as powerful pain relief even for those with neurological damage). (The downside is very few of these machines exist; they are especially scarce in rural areas. Mammography interests also downplay their role in breast cancer detection.)

(3.) The year's best health news may not be a health protocol at all. It may be Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). While the idea behind HSAs is to decrease insurance payouts, and to shift risk to employee/customers from insurer/plans the great thing about HSAs is that you make decisions that are independent of insurance or plan restrictions. Insurers for decades have been traditional and conservative in terms of what they choose to cover. This has not been in the best interest of women, since much of traditional medical practice was designed by and for men, and not optimized for women.

When women opt out of traditional health insurance plans, or opt for high deductible plans, they regain control of their health choices. They no longer choose a treatment because it is covered by their insurance; they can choose a treatment because it is the right treatment for their health and family history. Yes, they will pay for it. But it sets women free.

So, for example, a woman who has a backache and believes that Reiki (energetic healing) may be more appropriate than Vicodin (pain killing Rx) will choose Reiki because both are below the deductible levels. A woman who thinks thermography makes more sense than mammography will seek out thermographic imaging, when in the past, only mammography was paid for by insurance. And a woman who feels that chiropractic or psychiatry may not be complete after just 6 visits will make the decisions that feel right for her, not be driven by policy visit maximums.

In short, HSAs do exactly what policy makers hoped they would do, they make people more involved in their own healthcare decision making. In the process, though, a very profound paradigm shift is occurring. Physicians used to a culture of patient compliance will need to be more patient and customer focused, because patients are now in the driver's seat. They will no longer be limited by the restrictions of their plans. And rather than making decisions in cost effective ways prescribed by policy makers and insurers, they will take matters into their own hands. Driven by Internet research, and relationships with their own bodies, they will make new decisions, radical decisions, often highly cost effective decisions, but decisions with a new female paradigm of health and wellness, not so focused on disease management.