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Insurance is a program that lets you pay instalments now against the risk of expenses in the future. With something like fire insurance, you get a quote for rebuilding your home or business premises from the ground up. That represents the maximum amount necessary to put you back into the position before the fire struck. No matter how optimistic or pessimistic you are, you and the insurance company can put a price on the potential loss. Unfortunately that does not work so well when it comes to medical costs. The young and optimistic have perfect health and prefer not to think about the risk of accidents or illness. These are things that happen to other people. But, sooner or later, there is greater realism. As the years roll by, most recognize the probability of illness is increasing and put some level of protection in place. But the basic question of optimism and pessimism never goes away. Do we assume the injury or disease will come and go quickly? Will there only be a few tests, no major interventions and no continuing costs? Or will the problem prove more serious, require major surgery and long-term care? Until the recession hit, we could all afford to be reasonably laid back. Those more inclined to provide against the darker possibilities would add a few dollars a month to the premium instalments and sleep well at night. But with every family budget coming under pressure as the economy tanks and unemployment stalks the land, the question becomes more difficult to resolve. Those few extra dollars a month have to be justified.

Why think about it now? Well, let’s take the worst case scenario. Suppose you or one of your family are struck down. Suddenly, you are looking at big bills and worried about the extent of the cover available under the policy. This is not the best time to open negotiations with the insurer. You are emotionally weak. Worse, the reality of large losses will color the reaction of your insurer. The best time for these negotiations is when you are calm and all the losses for the insurer are in the future. This allows everyone to deal with hypotheticals and not get alarmed when big numbers are mentioned. So why do insurers start talking about big numbers? The national statistics show claims for long-term care almost always fall into the range of three to five years. That’s a big bill when you add in all the different services potentially required, whether in your own home or a nursing facility.

So what happens to people without long-term health insurance? The worst happens to those who have built up assets. Instead of providing for their families, they find all their assets sold to cover the apparently endless series of bills. Of course, some families have one or two who can be persuaded to act as carers. They sacrifice their earning capacity to provide home nursing. This, of course, is the worst case, where the losses just keep mounting up as families cope with the emotional and financial costs of the care. Health insurance provides protection for retirement savings and the assets readied for the children to inherit. Long-term policies cannot remove the emotional burden of living with an injured or dying loved one, but it can make the time less financially stressful.

What causes arthritis?

In the majority of cases chronic pain is experienced by people who have been diagnosed with arthritis. And treating the condition is not as easy as it may seem. Doctors account over a hundred medical conditions linked to arthritis, which affect joints and surrounding areas. In fact, arthritis falls second after heart diseases as the primary cause for work incapacity and disability. And even the simplest everyday activities can become really hard to do because of the pain you get with arthritis.

Usually arthritis arises when there’s excessive joint wear and tear. As the body ages naturally there’s more wear to the joints than in a younger body. However, excessive use of certain joints can lead to arthritis at earlier stages of life, and one of the primary causes of such use is excessive weight. The main rule here is the better you treat your body and pay more attention to your health, the less likely you will develop arthritis.

Ways to avoid or decrease your chance of arthritis:

There are strategies you can employ to avoid the severe onset of arthritis, but the main thought here is that you have to treat your body just the right way well ahead before you are likely to develop the condition in order to relieve it.

Here are some tips on how to minimize the risk of suffering from chronic pain caused by arthritis:

Keep your weight within a healthy range. Having extra weight means you’ll have excessive wear and tear in the joints, especially in your legs and in your back.

Follow a regular exercise program. Having low physical activity will weaken your muscles, which will make the joints sustain a lot more pressure than with strong muscles. Having stronger muscles will lift the pressure from your joints and prolong their usability. But be careful to not over exercise and try to fit your weekly program into a single day. The main idea here is to distribute the pressure evenly, and by doing too much physical activity you risk of damaging your joints.

Try to make as little repetitive movements as possible. Such movements are the primary source of wear and tear to joints, so try to diversify your activities and avoid repeating the same motions without a need.

Follow a healthy dietary regimen and keep your hydration levels normal. Having enough water in your body provides the necessary lubrication and substance circulation, while healthy foods provide all the needed elements to keep the joints in a good shape for a longer period of time.

If pain strikes

Following the above mention tips will help you prevent the development of arthritis, but what if the pain suddenly strikes? One of the most effective ways to cope with chronic pain is to buy Tramadol. Tramadol is one of the most effective medications for strong chronic pain and many doctors recommend it when dealing with arthritis. However, you should take it exactly as prescribed by your doctor and not exceed the recommended dosage. Learn more about Tramadol before using it to make sure you’re treating pain effectively and with no risk to your health.

Doctors make a general distinction between acute pain from an injury that’s going to heal or disease that’s going to be cured, and chronic pain where you will be forced to deal with pain over a long period of time. So, for acute pain, all you need is a few pills and patience while the pain slowly fades away. Chronic pain should have a different approach but, for the following reasons, doctors prefer the pill bottle. If you look at the way the US healthcare service is organized, the basic motivation is making a profit. Because most patients carry some insurance, the strategy for doctors is to see as many patients in the day as possible so they can maximize the bill presented to the insurers for payment. In the good old days, a caring physician would take the time to get to know the patient and understand his or her needs. Now it’s straight to the business of writing out a prescription and calling for the next patient. Very few doctors ever take the time to investigate the underlying causes of the pain and find the best treatments because this takes time and time is money. Of course, the patients with the top-of-the-line insurance plans are covered. And the wealthy can afford to pay their own way to the best treatment. But the average citizen is on a conveyor belt to the fastest and easiest treatment which, by some strange coincidence, just happens to be a drug.

Why a coincidence? Because all the ads you see on television and in the newspapers and magazines, are paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. The corporations making the drugs are using hard-selling techniques to reinforce your dependence on pills as the primary form of treatment. That way, you go into your doctor’s clinic with the brand names of the relevant drugs on your lips. You are brainwashed into thinking the use of drugs should be the first response to all your problems. Why is this a problem? Because it’s turning the US into a country of addicts. Worse, as people continue to use many of the drugs, their tolerance increases and the effectiveness of the drugs declines. According to the National Centers for Health Statistics, approximately 75 million people in the US suffer some degree of chronic pain, i.e. pain giving them a poor quality of life. Agreeing, the American Pain Foundation offers a simple comparison. If you count up all the people who have cancer, strokes and heart disease every year, only a million or so die every year, but the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and clinics devote vast amounts of time and money to offering treatments. Because there’s not the same amount of money to be made out of people suffering chronic pain, you are offered second-best service.

This is a political problem and, so far, there’s no sign the reform bills going through the House and Congress will deal with this. It all comes down to the priorities of how limited money is to be spent. On the one hand, you can be offered painkillers on a take-it-or-leave it basis. This is not so bad. Tramadol is an excellent drug and gives consistent relief from moderate to severe pain. Or you can be offered access to proper diagnosis and treatment. While we wait for a revolution, buy tramadol and find some relief from the pain of your condition.

To start us off, let’s take in a simple statistic. The National Institutes of Health currently estimates the US economy loses more than $100 billion per year on healthcare expenses, lost productivity and lost earnings caused by chronic pain. People in serious pain cannot go to work and take up time in the healthcare system. By a curious coincidence, the estimated cost of the healthcare reform currently working its way through the Washington mill is less than $100 billion per year. That’s why more than 75 millions Americans could do with a reversal of the current approach to pain. All the main lobbying power going into efforts to block reform supports the idea of maximum profit for minimum effort. That means doctors peddle pills as the first response treatment and discourage those in pain from seeking access to proper support services. OK, so just what are these “proper” support services?

Pain is a symptom of an underlying health problem. It can be an injury or the result of a disease. The first step is therefore a full diagnostic exercise to positively identify what is causing the pain. It’s no use trying to guess whether you do or do not have, say, a herniated disk. There are tests that can say definitively what the problem is and so point directly at the recommended treatment. In the case of a herniated disk, this would be a steroid injection and physical therapy. As with any service, it’s a case of matching resources and needs. Once you have a diagnosis, you can say whether a hospital should perform surgery or apply one of the other interventional procedures. Fully informed decisions can be made on which drugs to use and at what dosages. As it is, patients are left as a continuing experiment to try different drugs at different dosages and report back on pain levels. In appropriate cases, there can be reference to physical therapy or, sometimes more effective, psychological counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy and support services. All this before we get to the alternative therapies including acupuncture. Why all these different options? Because, people are complicated and do not fit into convenient treatment boxes. Everyone deserves to be treated as an individual with the right treatment given by the appropriate specialist.

Progress to persuade hospitals and clinics to set up pain management services is slow. These for-profit organizations do not believe they make a sufficient return on the cost of labor to justify creating a comprehensive department, bringing all the specialisms together. Change will only come when the politics of healthcare advances past the question of capitalism and makes the patient the center of attention. Until then, the best we can hope for is good medication. When it comes to the relief of moderate to severe pain, we are fortunate to have tramadol available. This is an opioid and so offers much the same level of relief as the opiates but with fewer adverse side effects. If you cannot prevail on your health insurance company to pay for “proper” pain management, you can console yourself with the best of the medications. Buy tramadol, write to your congressman and hope better days will come on the pain management front.