NZ and US have something great in common

[Dietrich]

For 8 years now I've been working in a field of the healthcare industry which is so deep within the system that it hardly ever is even alluded to in medical dramas, namely medical transcription. As a medical transcriptionist, the impression I've gotten is that healthcare in the US is mainly a matter of medications and surgeries. By and large, the solution to most health problems is either giving you a drug (or more likely a battery of drugs; I've transcribed reports on patients who were on 25 to 30 different drugs at a time) or cutting you open, manipulating various anatomic structures, then closing you back up.

It's ironic to consider how we nowadays regard the medical practices of past ages as barbaric; yet I reckon that if one were to go back to, say, 12th-century England and describe 21st-century western medical practices in terms folks (even highly educated ones) back then could understand, they could very well regard what we do as barbaric(!) (exaggerated delivery for emphasis) "If a pregnant woman shall fail to give birth within a certain span of time, the physician will cut open her belly and pull the infant out with tongs!" *gasps of shock*

[Michael Emrys]

As a medical transcriptionist, the impression I've gotten is that healthcare in the US is mainly a matter of medications and surgeries.

Yeah, I've thought a lot about this too, from the point of view of the patient. The (tentative) conclusion I have arrived at is that this is largely due to a concept of the human body as a machine. Going to the doctor is a lot like taking your car to the shop. They run tests, perform diagnostics, and replace parts, either chemically on the molecular level or surgically at the macroscopic level. Now, this actually does work...up to a point. But I think the time has long since arrived when we need to realize that that point has been surpassed and we need to rethink the whole approach.

I know that some people have been doing this for a while, pursuing holistic approaches involving diet etc. The problem with that is that the whole field is riddled with quackery and pseudo-science. It will take a while to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I also know that in my state there are medical institutions that have been combining conventional allopathic treatment with holistic approaches, but I don't know yet what their success rates are.

Michael