Why is it that many doctors and medical professionals are being trained to treat symptoms and not the actual cause of a person’s problem? For example, I’ve had acid reflux almost my whole life and it’s been pretty bad lately. I had an upper endoscopy done recently where a biopsy was taken, I was vaguely told that the biopsy results showed I have reflux (without any more explanation of what about it showed that I have reflux), and then was prescribed a higher strength acid reducer, that ended up wrecking my gut. It turns out most acid reducing medicines can have major long term side effects and make your reflux worse when you go off of them. It’s just crazy to me that instead of trying to find what is causing my reflux, I was given medicine to treat the symptoms. So I’ve started searching for answers to what could be causing my reflux, and stumbled upon a podcast episode about reflux and how, often, only the symptoms of reflux are treated. The doctors on the podcast are functional medicine doctors. So I thought, maybe I should just find that kind of doctor near me to go to. But it turns out that the type of doctors that actually seek to find the root cause of people’s problems are rarely covered by insurance!! (I’m aware that there are some doctors who do this and don’t fall under the functional medicine umbrella, but I haven’t found any where I live). So unless you’re well off, it’s basically impossible to be seen without breaking the bank. Why is it, that in American, the medical professionals who benefit big pharma by treating the symptoms with medicine are covered by insurance, but the ones who don’t, are not? Money seems to be the obvious answer to me. I’m sure those doctors do genuinely care for their patients, but the higher ups seem to only care about money and not the general health and well-being of us Americans. Is it just me, or does America’s medical system need a makeover? This is just one of the many issues people have with it too (and, of course, it’s not all bad, but there’s a lot that could be changed imo).