America needs true health care

I’m astounded to observe how people manage symptoms while remaining blind to problems’ core causes.

A perfect reflection of this chronic inattention is the politically polarizing debate in our government over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

We are so riled up over the availability of services and costs of treating the ill, but the real problem is that far too many people are getting sick to begin with.

Sure, even if Obamacare was written to improve our health care system, it may help the sick get the care they deserve. But it will fail to stop the statistical surge of diseases we have been observing.

An ironic characteristic of developed nations is their high cancer rates. The United States ranks seventh in the world, with a staggering 44 percent and 38 percent lifetime risk of developing cancer for men and women, respectively.

You also have to consider the exploding frequency of conditions such as diabetes, obesity and autism that threaten the quality of life.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2010 that as many as one in every three U.S. adults could have diabetes by 2050.

The U.S. has a brutal 31.8 percent obesity rate and now bears the painful fact that 1 in 88 children have some form of autism.

Ignoring the root causes of America’s desperate need for expansive health care is like living inside an unventilated hoarder’s house. Yeah, you stock up on antibiotics, but you fail to address the omnipresence of feces, mold and the proliferation of bacterial colonies.

It is like stepping on a nail and piling disinfectants and gauze dressing as a response, but viewing the nail poking out of the floor as no big deal.

The health care system can be more accurately described as disease care because it treats disease and isn’t geared towards effectively preventing these disturbances to our health.

Alongside disease care, we need a true health care framework dedicated to reducing the occurrences of illnesses. Through investing in more strategic measures, we can pull the seeds from which these trends in disease are stemming and better educate the public on how to take care of their bodies.

Hopefully, this would alleviate our inflamed dependency on the medical industrial complex in the war against disease.

It is nauseating to witness how America is rushing to its government like a sick child to his or her mother, crying for more medicine.

This is the same government that’s eroding the Food and Drug Administration, deliberately using trace amounts of mercury-based preservatives in your vaccines , and subsidizing corn, and by extension, junk food.

We need to grow up and urge mommy to clean up her act and the home we live in for a healthier future.

­— edharo@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Edgar Haro on Twitter @EdHarodude.