Journalist Marianne Grosjean addresses a message in each of her columns. This month, she tackles a paradox: that of a system that reimburses therapists while keeping them away from doctors.
So how much are your premiums? And with supplementary insurance? I've always been fascinated by the Swiss particularity of reimbursing a whole range of therapists through supplementary insurance - which makes all the naturopaths, acupuncturists and other kinesiologists established in France drool with envy - and on the other hand, making no link between these professions and conventional medicine in public health policy...
I'm reminded of my reflexologist's disappointment during the pandemic: «We therapists play an important role in keeping patients healthy. A healthy body can fight off a virus. I thought that this pandemic was bound to create bridges between doctors and therapists. That, alongside the search for a cure, doctors would be advising everyone to look after their general health: to get some fresh air in the forest, to eat healthily, to check their deficiencies, to maintain social contacts and to have regular check-ups with their therapists. Conversely, we could have acted as a relay: encouraging a patient whose immunity we feel is waning to be particularly vigilant and get vaccinated, for example.»
What if we'd missed an opportunity to do better? I tend to think of the health professions as a brain with two hemispheres. On the one hand, the physiological approach, which consists in keeping the body in good health, so that it can react as closely as possible to the way it was designed to. On the other, the pathological approach, which will detect what's malfunctioning, tackle the problem and eradicate the disease. From what I learned in my old biology classes, the brain's proper functioning is based on a good transfer of in- formation from one hemisphere to the other, in short, on excellent communication. But what happens when one hemisphere functions alone? It compensates for what it can, but cannot perform as well as if both hemispheres were working together.
Let's take another look at our healthcare professions: when those focused on pathology operate in a vacuum, the fear of disease drives them into overdrive. During the Covid crisis, fear led us to order 61 million doses of vaccine, or six injections for every inhabitant, from infants to the elderly! The result? We only used a quarter of them, and threw 1.5 billion francs down the drain.
On the other hand, while physiologically-oriented professions also operate in a vacuum, they refuse to see the dangers. As a result, we've had anti-vaxers denying the existence of serious complications, and healers claiming to deliver us from cancers with herbal concoctions. And at the same time, an almost impossible dialogue between the two camps.
To avoid such an unfortunate situation in the future, why don't we invest a little money and political will in good communication between these two worlds? Let the various healthcare professions share their knowledge, experiences and results? That they listen to and compare the experiences of their respective patients, and pool them together? Would it really be a problem for a gastroenterologist to send his patient to a professional for regular colonic irrigations? Or for a psychiatrist to refer her burn-out patient to a life coach?
The stakes are the same for everyone: to improve general health, and incidentally to lower premiums.
The journalist Marianne Grosjean addresses a message to our readers in his column.
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