Employers looking for ways to reduce the costs of health care may be interested in a new program available in Houston. The program encourages employees to practice healthy lifestyles and extends benefit coverage to alternative health care providers. Its emphasis is on improving and prolonging the health of employees by supporting the body’s tendency toward wellness.

The natural state of the human body is wellness. It is designed to return to good health when it becomes infected, injured, poisoned, burned, etc. When its cells or systems malfunction, the body initiates processes to identify and fix whatever is malfunctioning. Disorders of the body are either acute or chronic.

Acute disorders are those for which the body’s ability to heal itself functions properly. For example, if bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites, invade the body and attack its cells, the body launches mechanisms to overcome and kill those organisms.  These mechanisms may bring about fever, localized swelling, nausea, sneezing, coughing, watery eyes, or other symptoms, but over time, the body will heal itself.

Chronic disorders are those for which the body’s ability to heal itself goes awry. Left uncorrected, chronic disorders will get worse with the passage of time. Chronic disorders have been associated with advanced age, but today even young people suffer from them. The costs of treating chronic disorders are the primary reason for the rapidly rising costs of health care.

Treatments used by health care professionals rely on the body’s ability to heal itself. Treatments will vary dramatically by type of health care professional. In broad terms, health care professionals are either medical (allopathic) doctors or alternative care doctors.

Allopathic doctors focus on sicknesses. Allopathic doctors first diagnose the disease or disorder, then they administer the standard medical treatment protocol for that condition. Common treatments for both acute and chronic disorders are drugs. Since almost all drugs treat the symptoms and not the cause, chronic disorders often intensify because the body’s self-healing mechanism continues to malfunction. Further, long-term use of drugs creates undesirable complications. Doctors treat those complications with other drugs and patients embark on a slippery slope of long-term, multiple-drug dependency. If chronic illnesses progress beyond the ability of drugs to cope with the symptoms, the treatments escalate to the use of hazardous processes (radiation and surgery) and the costs of the medical treatments increase rapidly. The spiraling costs of allopathic treatments for chronic disorders drive health care costs to ever higher levels.

In contrast, alternative care (non-allopathic) doctors focus on wellness. Treatments utilize non-toxic and non-hazardous materials and procedures to return the body to its natural state. Alternative care doctors look for clues about how and why the body drifted from its natural state. Once they reach a conclusion, they recommend certain remedies, rarely drugs, to help the body heal itself. If the remedies address the cause, the body returns to its natural state and the chronic disorder goes away.

Addressing the causes of chronic illnesses can often be a simple and cost-effective option for chronic disorders. Preventing chronic illnesses and delaying their onset by adopting healthy lifestyle practices can be even more cost effective.

Evidence of the effectiveness of alternative care treatments of chronic disorders abound. Books and articles written by respected health care professionals maintain that lifestyle and other adjustments can have a very positive impact on chronic disorders. Their claims are supported with sound logic and published research.  

Employers wanting to add alternative health care options to their benefits packages can be hindered by strong ties between the health insurance industry and the allopathic medical community. Insurance policies rarely cover alternative health care practitioners and remedies. In addition, insurance companies rarely offer incentives to change behavior. Therefore, the costs of bringing about lifestyle changes in employees’ behavior are left to the business owner.

Programs that include alternative health care professionals are being developed and adopted in the greater Houston (Texas) area. These programs are designed to hold down health care benefit costs and to improve the long-term health of employees.

If you would like to explore these programs for you or your business, send an e-mail to earlkemper@iib.ws.