WEIL: I have a somewhat different perspective. I think that unless we change the content of health care, any attempt at reform is doomed. Any system we set up, whether it's single payer or universal coverage, is going to be taken down by uncontrollable costs. We have to lower the costs of health care. And the kind of medicine that we now practice is not sustainable because it relies on expensive high-tech solutions.
BLITZER: So what does that mean to change the content?
WEIL: So I think the trick is to figure out how do we get these costs down? The first step is prevention, obviously. But, secondly, we have to train physicians and other health professionals to use low-tech interventions for common health problems.
BLITZER: Give me an example.
WEIL: Well, you know, I wrote a recent blog about the treatment of GIRD -- gastroesophageal reflux disease. The standard way of managing this is to give proton pump inhibitor drugs. These are expensive drugs that suppress acid production in the stomach. They may be useful for some people. They're not intended for long-term use. There are simple measures -- dietary adjustment, use of natural products like EGL, a licorice extract, which increases the mucous coating in the stomach.
The problem is our physicians are not trained to use these less expensive, low-tech interventions. And this is what we should be doing first, before we go to the expensive kinds of medicine that we now use for everything.
BLITZER: What responsibility, in your opinion, do physicians out there have for this problem, as you see it?
WEIL: Well, I think, it's up to physicians to learn these other ways of dealing with disease. You know, physicians are as discouraged and angry as patients today. And great numbers of physicians are leaving the practice of clinical medicine because they've lost their autonomy. They're very discouraged that what's done in medicine today is dictated by policies of reimbursement, not really by science, not really by evidence or good physician's judgment. So I think, you know, there's enormous discontent among both physicians and patients. This is a huge problem. And we can't change it just by trying to give more people access to the present system. The present system is a disaster! It doesn't work! We have to -- I'll just repeat, we have to change the content of health care, the nature of what we do in medicine and health care, if we're going to have a sustainable system..........
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Are there any lessons for Nigeria in Weil's views? Can Nigeria afford to continue pursuing a healthcare approach that is certainly unsustainable?
Read and learn more about Dr. Weil's work and approaches to healthcare at:
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine:
http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/
Official Website:
http://www.drweil.com/
Ask again: Are there lessons for Nigeria here in these sites?
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