The Real Cost of Chiropractic Care
We sometimes hear that people don’t receive regular chiropractic care because they believe it to be “too expensive.” The soaring health care costs and rising insurance premiums paint the current healthcare landscape. Today, Americans can spend upwards of $100,000 in prescription drugs EVERY YEAR.
In my nearly 40 years of experience, I have seen how regular chiropractic care may actually save families thousands of dollars in healthcare expenses over the long-term.
Trends in HealthCare.
The first startling trend is that the amount of money we spend, as Americans, on healthcare AND health insurance (including policy premiums, deductibles, co-pays, etc.) has risen exponentially. As a national average, we now spend nearly $10,000 out of pocket (per person) on healthcare expenses.
The second, even more startling trend, is that despite all of the out-of-pocket money we spend on our healthcare expenses, as a nation, our health hasn’t improved and in fact may have gotten much worse. Across the globe, we’re 1st when it comes to spending money on healthcare, but we rank a dismal 37th in overall health status, 39th for infant mortality, and 36th overall for life expectancy.
Chiropractic Care May Help Break the Cycle
A 2007 study from Illinois found that people who used a Doctor of Chiropractic as their PCP (Primary Care Provider) had these positive results:
60.2% less in-hospital admissions 59.0% less hospital days 62.0% less outpatient surgeries and procedures 85% less pharmaceutical costs
*Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2007 (May); 30 (4): 263–269
Here at Simply Chiropractic ME in South Berwick Maine, we are honored to care for hundreds of families. Because our patients receive regular chiropractic care from us, they tend to have a greater understanding of healthy lifestyle habits, use far less pharmaceutical drugs and have far less surgeries than some of the families that do not receive chiropractic care.
Our current environment is even more stressful and toxic than ever before, and as a result our nation is sicker than ever, especially our children. Exposure to extreme stressors early in life (such as excessive use of birth interventions, chemical and other toxins in our environment, in our food, our air and our water, etc.) means that we are suffering on a daily basis. When continued, chemical stressors can lead to increased hospital stays and more financial strain.
As a Doctor of Chiropractic, I understand that over time, our nervous system gets worn down, tenses up, and retains this type of stress. Pressure builds up within the spinal column, which is the “house” of the spinal cord. We, the chiropractors, are trained to locate these patterns of stress/pressure build up that cause our nervous system and body to function less than optimally. To correct this build up of stress, or what we call “subluxations”, we make safe, specific adjustments, that are designed to clear the tension patterns, and restore normal tone and function to your nervous system. A healthy nervous system = healthy brain and body!
Health Care vs. Sick Care
America’s healthcare system currently takes a reactive approach to health care. Therefore, many of the patients we see in our office have already been through multiple rounds of medicine, medications, and surgery. Usually by this time, it may require a significant amount of chiropractic care to get their nervous system and body back to a state of optimal health.
We like to think of ourselves as pro-active health-care doctors. The more regularly families get checked for spinal cord stress build up/ “subluxations”, the less frequently they visit their sick-care doctor(s).
The Why of this is pretty easy to understand. Stress releases stress hormones in our body. It is a scientific fact that stress hormones decrease genetic expression, and that long term stress creates disease.
We are health experts, not experts in ‘sickness’ and ‘disease’. As such, we encourage families under our care to think of us as the doctor they see routinely to de stress your nervous system, and to get well and stay well. When there is a concern or issue that is outside our realm of practice, you can count on us to give our best recommendation to another practitioner. We love to help people get the best care possible.
Chiropractic Care for Optimal Health and Savings
Over and over again, we find that the more our patients visit us, the less need there is for a visit to the sick care doctor. The fewer visits the sick care doctor, the less money is spent in the expensive, high-risk, sick care system, which circles back to spending less money, overall, on healthcare.
Though most of our patients visit us for routine wellness care, we do encourage our families to visit us first when there are symptoms of anything new, from an infected ear, an allergy flare up, or a sore back. We’d much rather find the health challenge when it is still a minor issue that can be resolved easily, rather than wait until the problem becomes much worse. At Simply Chiropractic ME in York County, we are proactive in our approach, not reactive!
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