Health Care Reform and Well Being

Were it not for the constraints of time, this could be a longer post. The topic of health care reform in the United States prompts many passionate reactions from citizens. Abroad, people must wonder how we have tolerated the system we have for this long anyway? In the midst of economic chaos in the United States, the issue has been temporarily put on the back burner. Yet, President Obama knows very well that the costs of inaction, in human terms and in dollars saved, are greater than the cost of reform—and growing every day.

The irony is that attempts at national reform in the United States have been tried several times during the past century. For example, most people don't appreciate that President Harry Truman tried valiantly to reform the system, without success. Then there are the better known efforts of President Kennedy (leading to the compromise that became Medicare and Medicaid), and the failed Clinton effort. In each case, the complexity of the issue, special interest groups protecting their "rice bowls", and an effective disinformation campaign by the health insurance companies linking a national approach to "socialism" or socialized medicine, were able to derail the efforts. Meanwhile, like a patient in critical condition, the system is in need of urgent life support and getting worse.

So, what does this have to do with "Doing Life Well"? It's simple, really. Important requirements for doing life well include being informed about issues, making wise choices, and advocating for conditions in our communities that support our ability to participate in activities that contribute to our health. Former HHS Secretary nominee Tom Daschle has advocated for a compromise solution that would create a Federal Health Board and unify both private and public systems, requiring everyone to have insurance. Personally, I think the best system is a single payer system that enables choice and limits profits that are based on human illness or suffering. Why profit from services that people have no choice but to accept? Isn't that a grand perversion of monopoly? But, the important thing is to make progress in reforming the system. Whatever we do, however, we must have as a principle of reform that lifestyle-related prevention and health promotion initiatives and funding are part of the solution. The value of such efforts is unmistakable, and can save millions (not to mention the advantages of helping people feel better about themselves and making them happier and more productive). Most people would rather live their lives well and be active and engaged than to have health care money spent on keeping them "alive" at the end of life, hooked to tubes and merely surviving rather than flourishing.

Albert Einstein, a wise and learned man, once observed that not everything that can be measured counts, and not everything that counts can be measured. The dialogue about health care must include a discussion of issues not easily measured, like value. There is a wide difference between the meanings of cost and value. We must ask the question: How is the system to support efforts that address people's quality of life?

More on Happiness...

My recent blog on happiness prompted a reader to send a link to the WebMD website and an interesting article on happiness. You can link to that article by clicking on the title to this post. The article identifies six barriers to happiness, citing work by the author of a recent book on Happiness by Darrin M. McMahon, PhD.

The six barriers explained in the WebMD blog include the following:

1. Complexity
2. Breakneck pace
3. Negativity
4. Despair
5. Suppressing Sadness
6. Navel gazing

Each of these barriers has a solution, and rather than make it easy for you by reiterating them here, I am going to suggest that readers imagine what they are. Then, go to the article and read them for yourself.

While some are obvious, others are more challenging, and not surprisingly, most involve changes in attitude or behavior that are wholly under our control. Thus, it seems, the keys to being happy are entirely within us; we can use changes in attitude or behavior to unlock the power within us to create the lives we want.

All of this, of course, is apparent to psychologists, students of positive psychology, and life coaches, and to them it probably seems obvious. But, sadly, it seems that so many people are held captive by their external locus of control, which is a fancy way of explaining that to many people, what happens to them is the result of forces outside them: they have rotten luck, they are victims of chance or downtrodden by the ruthless behaviors of others. People who feel this way assign the reasons for things that happen to the universe, to some external entity, or, in some cases, to "God's will.

Albert Einstein, a pretty smart cookie by any standard, once observed that "God does not play dice with the universe." Reading about Einstein is surprising to many. He was a brilliant physicist. And being a scientist, given to the precision of numbers and formulas and all, one might think he was less inclined to contemplate beauty and the spiritual mysteries of a complex universe. But the truth is, Einstein was very contemplative and spiritual—perhaps because his appreciation for the complexity of things convinced him that the world or the universe could not be readily explained by chance.

This blogsite is about doing. And one of the things we can "do" to improve our lives is to take control of them. January is a perfect month to resolve to do things differently. Attending to overcoming the barriers to personal happiness seems like a worthy pursuit and a great place to start. So, if you have a mind to —be happy— begin doing it now.