– What the Medical Industrial Complex Doesn’t Want You to Know

There’s an old familiar saying for many of us in our 50’s, 60’s and 70’s - one our parents and grandparents often provided as advice when we were making decisions in our youth, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It makes sense. If you don’t want your car to deteriorate rapidly, do preventative maintenance, and avoid the inevitable outcome of a costly repair bill and chronic unreliability of your car. Why is the same advice not followed when it comes to the way governments spends our tax dollars on our health?

The health of Canadians as we age has been, and continues to be, an engaging and often heated topic for discussion. If our bodies are designed to live for 100 years or more (some say 130 years!), why is this not the case for the majority of people in North America? Why with all our medical advances are we seeing dramatic increases in chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease? Has the effectiveness of the current medical industrial complex plateaued, leaving us with ongoing infrastructure, medical procedure and prescription drug costs we will soon not be able to afford? Is there an alternative?