As the average American navigates today’s treacherous world of healthcare, there are a number of things to consider. With ever rising rates of cancers, heart disease and diabetes, just to name a few, more consumers are looking for solutions that actually work. Fading are the days when compromising one’s health with side effects that rival, or even surpass the original symptoms, is an acceptable casualty.
Since health insurance typically does not cover many natural and safe alternatives to traditional medicine, a smart consumer must carefully consider how to allocate his/her healthcare budget. That’s right, I said it. An investment in our selves is mandatory for those interested in achieving and maintaining good health in today’s challenging environment. But make no mistake about it – even if you don’t care about your health, one way or the other, you’re going to have to pay.
It’s easy to understand how other things can take priority over our health. This is especially true when, with the help of symptom-silencing medications, we begin to lose our health with gradual imperceptibility. However, when we lose our health, the back end cost is so much more than the small investment it would have taken to alter our fate.
A recent study in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that, on average, the lifetime costs per person of a heart attack ranged from eight hundred thousand to over a million dollars. According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer cost our healthcare system 124 billion in 2010 and will cost 207 billion by 2020 – and that doesn’t include lost productivity. According to the American Diabetes Association, diabetes cost us 218 billion.
Even if you have insurance, it’s not hard to see how a twenty percent co-pay could cost you your lifetime savings.
And that’s just money. What about the quality and longevity of your life? Is being around to spend time with your grandchildren important?
With the realization that we are going to have to invest some resources into taking care of ourselves and our families, we might as well be smart about it. Realize that it costs much less to keep ourselves healthy than to wait until disease has manifested. Make sure that your efforts get to the root of your health problems. And understand that no amount of healthcare, alternative or traditional, can take the place of intelligent healthy lifestyle choices.
