What is right with health care at the moment?

The emerging growth of Consumer Empowered Health Care. I define this as including several areas…

1. Consumers seeking to be more educated and involved in their own health…through web education, online communities and chat groups by disease, seeking alternatives to traditional drugs and surgery for healing (e.g. rapid growth of expenditures for alternative medicine, yoga instruction), questioning our Western medicine as they now can tap into the global market to find proven Eastern medicine approaches and learn from other healthier cultures.
2. Movement of employers to shift more health care costs to consumers…which will force them to realize that health care is a major responsibility of the “individual” and cannot just be the “quick fix” approach that American health care has come to be over the years.
3. The emergence of more online and technology tools that will allow consumers/patients to become more educated about their own health and treatment options and to also to be more compliant with treatments and focused on prevention and wellness. A great example is the emerging market of interactive Games for Health, including exergaming, web-based games, cell phone games. These will allow consumers to combine entertainment with health care education and disease management and positive, healthy lifestyle support.
4. The research that is now out in droves about how the “American fast food and chain restaurant and processed food diet” has not only created a crisis in health care in America, but we have and continue to spread it across the world as well. (What a great legacy to be known for in the years ahead!)

So….what do I recommend to the new administration? Support all of the above in a major way and turn America into a land where healthy living (diet, exercise, stress management) is a priority and consumers become their own best advocates and educators on what is the “best” health care for them to live as healthy a life as possible… mind, body, and spirit.