My husband, Jeff, our compounding pharmacist meets with new clients-both men and women-as well as existing clients almost on a daily basis. He offers his services to evaluate BHRT therapy, adjust dosing for those who are ON our therapy, and discuss health issues with the people who come to him. He came home yesterday, exhausted, after meeting with 6 women and 1 man and said, “You know…the people who come to see me typically have very complicated health issues. And people are insulated from the real cost of health care, because most people have an insurance copay that covers their visits and medications. The issue is, when you call a plumber for example, to fix your leaking toilet, you pay him fair market value. You would never consider paying him just your copay and billing someone else for the rest. So when you think about it, people almost expect health care to be free, where the physician has to rely on billing insurance to get adequate reimbursement. The goal of insurance companies is NOT to pay money. And therein lies the dilemma. What IS your doctor’s time spent with you worth to you? Because of the difficulties getting reimbursed, patients get a 5-10 minute visit because that is all the doctor can afford to give you. How fair is it to the doctor AND how thorough can he be, to diagnose clinical issues? The end result is that you never figure out the root of the problem. Instead, you are left managing the symptoms with prescription medications. Getting to the root cause of health issues is often time-consuming and challenging because we aren’t simple creatures. Everything is interconnected. So when our clients schedule time to come in and see me, and we spend 45 minutes talking about their health issues and concerns, they are often surprised and confused by the information. They ask, “Why haven’t I heard this before? “Why hasn’t my doctor mentioned this before?” And the answer is, because our health care system isn’t set up to do so. There are a few physicians who do elaborate testing, dig into the biochemistry and try to get at the root of the problem. These are functional medicine physicians and typically they can’t afford to bill insurance. So the choice is yours-do you continue to go through standard of care medical treatment that treats only symptoms OR do you want to pay a fair price to the health care practitioner to actually delve to find the cause of your issue and solve your problem? Obviously, I think we need to change our mind set about health care in our country today. A real paradigm shift is called for, so we can actually go to our doctors, pay them fair market value and have them give us the time and attention required to really solve what is going on in our bodies. Invariably you will change the mind of the physician when he gets adequately reimbursed and he may be more open to alternative health care solutions. This would be a win-win for all.”
