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Healthcare for our children

by Dr. Amy Spoelstra
| April 14, 2010 9:00 PM

While healthcare costs are skyrocketing, there are some simple steps that we can all take to make sure our future generations help ease healthcare costs instead of raising them. After all, healthcare works like any other economic system. Supply and demand is the basis for a burgeoning or failing business. Less demand equals lower prices. More demand equals higher prices.

Look at something as simple as the Sony Playstation 3. When it first came out, it was very expensive. People were clamoring over each other to get a piece of this new technology. In the first months of release, those able to buy this system could then turn around and sell it for double what they paid for it on sites such as Ebay.com.

People would pay these prices because it is something they wanted. They wanted to play it on Christmas morning with their kids. They wanted to grab a piece of something that was hard to find.

A year later that same system wouldn't fetch even a third of the same price as it had in the past. The demand was met, therefore the base price of that system dropped substantially. Something that was once hard to come by is now available for less money and can be found on the shelves of your neighborhood retailer.

There is one glaring difference with healthcare. It revolves around the fact that everyone feels that they need it all of the time. Prices don't come down because the technology continues to be ramped up faster then we can keep track of the changes!

Healthcare is not like the Playstation 3, in that it is endlessly changing and improving itself. These improvements are great. In fact, I fully support them in caring for those who have no other choices.

But what happens if you never get sick and never need these advances? What happens if you never meet up with disease or illness? This is where our children come in to play.

In this day and age, a bag of Doritos is much cheaper than a bag of apples. I imagine that it must be very hard for a parent to choose the more expensive bag of apples over the bag of chips that their children would enjoy much more! It saves you money...right?

Well, my thought here is that maybe it doesn't. The choice of chips over apples might actually cost you more in the long run when it comes down to dealing with medical bills and medications. Should you feed your child sugary foods instead of foods with a great nutritional value? Perhaps the onset of juvenile diabetes will serve to level the playing field.

It is something we all need to think about. Although I do not have definitive numbers here, I would imagine, a healthy child would be less of a financial burden than one who needs constant medical attention. After all, healthcare is expensive!

Over time, the difference in the bag of apples over the bag of Doritos could be far less costly than medical expenses associated with illness.

I'm not here to tell to you what you should feed to your children. But, consider our economic system and ask yourself why healthcare costs continue to rise If we, as a community, can find a way to decrease the demand, we can also decrease the cost. I believe it all starts with wise food choices and promoting healthy behavior. Without these simple things, we cannot hope to impact the cost of healthcare by reducing the demand.

If you would like more information about what you can do to decrease your overall health care costs, please give us a call at (208) 762-1414. You can also find us at CDAHealth.com, or on Facebook and Twitter by searching "Spoelstra Family Chiropractic"