I got interested in the healthcare industry because I’m a beneficiary of government sponsored healthcare and I felt obligated to research this thing I rely on.

I learned about the financial unsustainability of Medicare on Khan Academy.

It’s no surprise, considering that the cost of healthcare in the US is increasing by double digits yearly, primarily due to the expensive treatment of chronic illnesses.

Treatment of chronic illnesses accounts for over 75% of the US’ annual healthcare expenditure [1], and more people every year are suffering from chronic illnesses [2]. (You might wonder why the number of people suffering from chronic illnesses is increasing.  I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory answer to this question.  For one thing, the country is aging and that is very significant, and for another there has been an increased prevalence of “risk factors” like obesity (why I don’t know) [3].)

Seven common chronic conditions -  cancer, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, pulmonary conditions and mental illness – are in many cases (obviously not in all cases) preventable [4], and can result from unhealthy responses to stress (from the stress of existence to the stresses of powerful physical or emotional traumas).

I understand well the genetic roots and the inevitable circumstances that give life to many diseases.

I wish to look at those things that can be changed in order to prevent more people from becoming chronically ill, and to prevent the one system we have for taking care of people who can’t afford insurance or need extra help from becoming insolvent.

Smoking, drug abuse, poor diet, little formal exercise, excessive alcohol consumption and mental disorders, all common causes of chronic conditions or conditions themselves [5], can all be responses to stress or simply part of a culture that de-emphasizes the struggle of self-care and overlooks oppression.

Rheumatoid arthritis [8] has also been linked to psychological stress.

Stress is a natural part of the individual’s experience of being human, but it is also reflective of social ills like poverty, sexual abuse, war, high-pressure jobs, greed in the media and in the fashion industry and other forms of oppression. At the same time these forms of oppression are the result of chronic malaise or illness in individuals manifested as ignorance, all the evils that arise from it and the pathological desire to dominate others.

Depression is one example of a condition that can be caused or amplified by simply existing in our society, or as human beings. (Both the disruption of the amygdala that is the result of traumatic stress and the stressors that promote depression are needless but extant parts of life).

And as for forms of prevention of these often-preventable illnesses, the healthcare industry is just stupidly structured. Rather than building a culture around prevention (thus acting humanely and saving on healthcare expenditures), insurance companies spend their money on treating people after their health has deteriorated [9]. And quite unfortunately, doctors are paid by the volume of care they provide, and not the quality [10].

Is there a way out of this? I don’t know.

In at least one way, I’m skeptical of the concept of recovery from illnesses of the soul because a human being is never entirely free from the pain that is the product of their inborn qualities and the overwhelming external circumstances imposed on them since birth. Only very few people have no demons.  Regardless, we need some mental health in this country. And that doesn’t mean having no demons.

It means living with our demons long enough to undermine those systems that oppress ourselves and others.

I tend to see others from my own limited perspective, but at times I can see a person as they are. In certain instances, it has come to me that people to whom I am attracted in whatever way can be seen in many ways other than mine:  as colleagues,  for example.

In fact, thinking of someone as a colleague is usually a very good thing, as a peer, a member of one’s own cohort.

I wish I could think of my friends as colleagues more often.   Not simply as people with whom I am on par in the great totem pole, whom I wish to keep on my “level” for the sake of my own self-esteem. But as whole individuals.

I can think of a friend as a whole individual when I triangulate, albeit not so formulaically.  IE: I view this person as a “lover,” another is intimidated by his painterly abilities… how do these two things fit together? To what do they point? They point to an individual.

I can glimpse it if not see it.

It’s no secret that movies and books and stories of all kinds twist our emotions. Our words and actions are responses to such stories, even stories of our own making, or perhaps exclusively stories of our own making, since we incorporate all stories into our own mythologies. But I’m grateful for such twisting, because once it is recognized for what it is we can be free of the self-consciousness that derives from the idea that our words and actions are not novel. To ourselves they may be old hat, dry and tired from eons of overthinking, but to others they may be refreshing and new. Seen from this perspective, they become refreshing and new to ourselves.

I don’t intend to run from stories. Every time I enjoy something or feel pain I participate in a story. The same story at one time can make me believe I am a hero, and at another, make me feel like I’m depraved. My mindset is always interacting with what is around me, and when I sit mindlessly at my computer, or feel some sort of anxiety about a decision I have to make, I die a little, and my mindset becomes ripe for  self-deprecation.  This self-deprecation happens when I encounter a mythical, real, or imagined hero. However , at another time, I find myself arbitrarily open to the beauty of stories and heroics and love. It is easy to overlook such feelings because so often we do not realize what it is we could be thinking instead. I’ll just say that I greatly appreciate those times I realize all the horrible things I could be thinking and have thought and am not thinking.

That gratitude is what makes me feel open to love.