Why is our medical system focused on masking symptoms and not making us healthy?

Answer 1

Quite an assumption. Ask yourself: Do antibiotics kill bacteria (cure the infection) or make us feel better. Is surgery to repair a broken hip just to make the patient feel better. Is a bypass to restore cardiac bloodflow curative or palliative. Is chemotherapy curative or just performed to make the patient feel better? Lots of conspiracy theorists out there think like you do. When you get into real trouble, you'll be bailed out by our medical system.

Answer 2

Because they believe it is cheaper to do this rather than give the best. In some ways the rationale is robust (if all large people believed they could take pills rather than just eat sensibly we would be in financial trouble) but then giving cheap antibiotics which need to be taken 4 times a day as opposed to once a day - well which aids compliance & non resisitant bacteria?
Sometimes that's all thats available - i.e. osteoarthritis. Better to give pain relief than let the patient wait for a drug that does treat the underlying problem.

Answer 3

Secret they don't tell you, they are still trying to understand how the body really works. Some of the 'healthy solutions' or 'fix whats broke' methods work and sometimes they don't, SO, they spend a lot of time trying to make you 'feel better' (mask symptoms) until they figure it out.
If you have a biology aptitude, go that direction career wise, the planet needs more people who can solve our health issues.

Answer 4

The original assumption was that, if you could relieve the distress, the body would have a chance to heal itself. They focused on "treating the symptoms" because, often, it was the symptoms, rather than the underlying disease, that would kill you. That and the fact that even today, the doctor doesn't necessarily know what disease you have and can only identify the symptoms.

This strategy works more often than not, and allows the doctor to begin treatment even before he's managed to identify the underlying disease.

Until we create instantaneous and infallible test mechanisms that can reliably identify the underlying disease, it's really the only workable strategy.

Answer 5

Because if the medical system actually cured diseases, it would adversely affect their business. They want to keep us sick so that we will need them. Who do you think will find a cure for all diseases? If someone announced such a discovery, how long do you think he or she would live? In China, you pay your doctor as long as you are healthy. When you get sick, you stop paying him. I think we should adopt that system here in the US. I hate doctors. They don't treat the causes of your disease or advise prevention of them; they treat the symptoms hoping that you'll eventually have to come back to them. The Hippocratic Oath has just become a joke. It's all about the money.

Answer 6

Its all pharmaceuticals. Thats how they make the money. They pay the hospitals, doctors, and colleges to teach about their meds to cure people.
Can you imagine if they actually found a cure for cancer. What that would do to the medical field. Trillions of dollars lost in treatments alone. Whos to say that they dont already have the cure. They just dont want to tell. I dont know.

Answer 7

I'm not sure - ask the doctor who only treats syphilis rather than curing it.

Oh, wait.

There AREN'T any.

Physicians focus on cures. If anyone's focused only on treatment, it's pharmaceutical companies. They have a financial incentive only to treat symptoms of diseases that are either impossible to cure (like allergies), or so difficult that it's far easier to just treat the symptoms (like erectile dysfunction).

While I'll readily admit that pharmaceutical companies are more interested in making money, perhaps, than curing diseases, painting the entire healthcare industry with one broad brush makes no sense and is unfair to those who actually DO care about cures.

Answer 8

bcz doctors want to secure his position in market
at same time patient wanst wonder drugs which should act immedietly other wise he will consult other doctor

so lack of patients patience and doctors race in todays era

i think these two main resons
Why is our medical system focused on masking symptoms and not making us healthy

Answer 9

It's the easy way out. They just make some arbitrary rules and vote them into law and then sit back in awe at the cost of repairing a person who need not have been so sick, had they received the proper care in the first place.

Answer 10

Masking symptoms = pharmaceuticals = $$$$$$$$$