Get the politics out of health care -- or settle for Band-Aids

Health care policy is one of the most complicated and contentious issues facing our country today. For the past several years, we have been living under the Affordable Care Act, the Democrats' best effort to provide a solution to the American health care system. With the recent release of the Republicans' American Health Care Act, we see an attempt at a plan from the other side of the aisle. Though there are significant differences between the two pieces of legislation, the summation of their efforts is piecemeal policy that attempts to find ways to pay for an overpriced and misdirected health care system without introducing structurally significant changes to drive down costs or to improve the overall health of Americans.

Health is a multifaceted condition in which medicine plays a surprisingly limited role. According to a report from the Minnesota Department of Health, clinical care accounts for just 10 percent of Americans' overall health. Much more important (about 50 percent) are issues that in our current system fall under the umbrella of "social services:" stable housing, sufficient and nutritious food, job and income stability, and personal safety. But when discussing health care policy, we tend to ignore this larger picture of health and to focus only on its medical aspects. The government's role in delivering what we think of as "social services" is an even more politicized topic than the government's role in health care.

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When we look closely at the facts and the costs of treating disease, we find that health care and social services cannot be cleanly separated. The less we spend providing access to healthy foods, the more we spend on hospitalizations related to cardiovascular disease, poorly-controlled diabetes, and obesity. The less we spend on quality low-income housing, the more we spend on a child's recurrent emergency room visits to treat preventable asthma attacks, and the more surgeries need to be performed because a homeless man didn't have the resources to keep his feet dry. These high-cost, late-stage interventions need to be paid for, and it's your money that is being spent on the inefficiencies of a health care system that doesn't put health first.

In theory, we consider health to be a standard everyone should be able to access: this is why we have laws that allow anyone to be seen in an ER, regardless of their ability to pay. But hospitals and emergency departments are some of the most expensive pieces of our health care system, and they are currently our catch-all for patients whose ailments might have been treated, controlled or prevented at a much-reduced cost if they had access to basic health and community services. Health in its true, holistic form will never be achievable as a nation as long as our health care policy proposals continue to ignore the social factors that are the largest contributor to Americans' health.

As Alaskans, we have unique health care needs and a responsibility to make sure people all across our vast and diverse state have proper access to health care and to health. It is imperative that we demand better. Health care should not be at the whim of political party infighting. It should not be treated as a bargaining chip, and it should not be designed based on corporate lobbyists or campaign funding. We must embrace solutions that would both decrease the real cost of health care and decrease the demand for health care services by keeping people from getting sick in the first place.

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Medical research and innovation in this country often focus on the development of new medical techniques, cures and treatments. We should continue these advancements and take pride in them. But we should also take pride in developing innovative ways to prevent illness, keep people healthy, and develop strong and healthy communities. It will save money, and it will save lives.

We need to continue to demand intelligent conversations, demand courage for real and radical change, and demand that our leaders take action to truly improve health, not just to find financial workarounds that keep people breathing. Health is not just a talking point of the established political machine. It is people's lives. It is your life.

Kate Simeon is a medical student at the University of Washington School of Medicine, WWAMI Alaska Campus. Graduates of Alaska's WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) program comprise 14 percent of working physicians in Alaska, and the goal is to have nearly all of the annual 20-student class return to practice in Alaska after finishing their education.

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