Comments on: Obama: Addressing the Healing Crisis

By: Dr. James S. Gordon

Dr. James S. Gordon — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:25:26 +0000

Dear Lee (and I think Bett may be interested as well),

The health care system has to move in a direction in which health professionals become teachers as well as ‘treaters.’ Our work is to “care for” people in every sense of those words. A significant portion involves teaching people how to take care of themselves. It’s not a matter of doing things for people (except in emergencies), it’s much more a question of teaching them to help themselves. This can be done in many settings, government-sponsored as well as private. My own experience is that if you give people this time and attention, many of them will take on more responsibility. Coercion and deprivation and even the proverbial “carrots” are not nearly so important as coming to a realization that your best help comes from within.

Thanks for your good words. Let’s keep on looking at ourselves and working together.
Jim

By: Lee McGinnis

Lee McGinnis — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:13:07 +0000

Gosh, both your post and the comment immediately above mine seem to be saying “Daddy, take care of me,” which I find to be in complete contrast to the first three chapters of Unstuck.
People need to be responsible for themselves; no one is forcing that pumpkin pie on those women, but if their glucose slips and monitors are paid with Medicare dollars, they are using taxpayer money to support their bad choices.
Don’t tell me it’s a lack of health care that is making them eat pie.
Lifestyle choices are responsible for 70% of chronic disease; unless and until people–not their employers, most certainly not the government–have skin in the game of the cost of these decisions, they will continue to act like children.

By: bett l.martinez

bett l.martinez — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:56:51 +0000

This was meaningful to me, and hopefully to Obama and his people:

We need to hear clearly from you that all those individuals and institutions that profit from our pain – hospitals, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and those of us who are doctors too – can be justified and supported only as long as they serve all of us.

Am researching programs for group behavioral change to improve self-efficacy for persons with diabetes, and though they talk about lifestyle, food management, exercise and such, they seem very focused on medication compliance and how to utilize glucose monitoring devices.

Jim, I sat at a diner with some lovely people last Sunday night, at a restaurant overlooking the ocean in Santa Cruz, and two women, unrelated but bonded through marriage, calmly took out their devices, took some measures, and gave themselves shots right at the table.
They then proceeded to eat some fulsome meals, followed by drinks (kahlua) and dessert, pumpkin pie.

I’ve shared meals with them before, and there’s always dessert. Now, it’s awful to begrudge anyone dessert, I guess, but if this means that we are all paying the cost of those monitors and shots, because there’s not a program like yours (or maybe ours) to support them to make changes they would like to achieve.

So thank you for saying it like it is, and so well!