When people start talking about
health insurance reform and how to bring health insurance to the American
people, they inevitably end up in a ridiculous discussion about how to
negotiate the cost of drugs, how to provide drug discounts to senior citizens, or
how to engage in a system of managed care that denies medical services to
certain groups. It's all a rather useless exercise in shifting paperwork,
blame, or money from the pockets of one organization to another. And in the
end, it helps no one.
Health insurance reform needs to
focus on the health, not the insurance, because you can never solve a problem
by shifting paperwork to another party or bu denying services to an
ever-expanding group of people. It's similar to the way in which the federal government
wants to solve social security: just keep raising the qualification age until
it's so high that almost nobody lives that long. How's that for security?
"If you live long enough, we'll even pay you back all the money you worked
for!"
In the realm of health
insurance, we need to start talking about disease prevention. The only way
we're going to lower the costs in the long run is if we make our population
healthier. And the only way we're going to make people healthier is if we start
admitting the truth about the detrimental health effects of prescription drugs,
processed foods, junk foods, soft drinks, lack of physical exercise and so on,
and then start educating people about how to take control of their health and
reduce their risk of ever experiencing chronic disease. That's how you solve
the health insurance problem: by making people healthy. What a novel idea, huh?
Right now people are getting all
the wrong messages about their health. They are being told that unhealthy foods
are good for them. The FDA has approved health claims that mislead consumers
into thinking things like sugary oatmeal is good for your heart because it
contains oats. It's a ridiculous claim. And yet the legitimate food claims --
like olive oil prevents breast cancer, garlic prevents cancer, raw nuts prevent
heart disease -- are not allowed at all. In fact, those are outlawed by the
FDA. So today we have a regulatory environment that actually prevents people
from learning the truth about foods that could help prevent disease. Thank
goodness the FDA is protecting us from all those dangerous health claims!
When was the last time the FDA
ever allowed the claim that blueberries reduce LDL cholesterol? You'll never
see that claim because the blueberry companies aren't going to engage in the
corruption, bribery, and political influence that would normally be required
for the FDA to approve something. Blueberries are just blueberries. They are
straight from nature. They are healthy. And they actually lower bad cholesterol
and improve cardiovascular health regardless of whether or not the FDA allows
such a claim.
Getting back to health
insurance, you have to remember that the health insurance business is just that
� a business. There are a lot of people making money pushing paper, providing
unnecessary medical procedures to the public and selling prescription drugs
over and over again to people who are undoubtedly suffering from downright
fatal side effects from the long-term consumption of such drugs. It's big
business and thus there is no real financial incentive for anyone to reform the
way health insurance works right now. Let's face it: sick people generate
revenues. It doesn't mean there's some evil conspiracy behind it all, it just
means that there's no financial incentive to teach people how to be healthy.
Who makes money if people get
healthier? Well, nobody does! The only people who benefit from widespread
health are the individuals themselves. In fact, billions of dollars in profits
would be lost by Big Pharma if the country were suddenly swept up by a wave of
health. So don't look for any serious health insurance or health care reform in
your lifetime. Nearly every public discussion about these topics is nothing but
sleight of hand designed to distract you from the real problem, which is the
disease-care industry and food & beverage industries that have no incentive
to help people get healthier.
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�Here's a final question in all of this: Why is it that other
countries can provide meaningful, full coverage health insurance for their
entire population at the equivalent of about $25/month? Of course, I am
referring to Taiwan. A country that provides full service health coverage for
only $25/month. And that includes maternity care, dental care, everything! And
it's the same $25 whether you're 16 or 60, regardless of your health history.
You can't be disqualified as long as you're a Taiwan citizen.
Yet in the United States, some
people are being charged $1000 per month for only partial coverage. Why is
that? Because health insurance is extremely inefficient. Probably 80-90% of the
money that goes into health insurance is falling into the pockets of people who
do nothing but push paper around. It's not going to the bottom line services
that people really need. And virtually none of it is going to disease
prevention education or public advertising campaigns that would inform people
about how to take charge of their own health and prevent chronic disease.
So all of this money is just
going down a black hole. It's utterly wasted. And today, the money spent on
health care comprises a significant portion of G&P. Something like $1 out
of every $4 spent in this country is spent on health care. We've also just
learned that 50% of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused
by medical bills. Think about that for a moment: the disease-care industry is
bankrupting our families and our nation. Only a fool would think the answer is
to introduce a drug discount card or some other such nonsense. That's like
tossing a cup of water on a raging house fire.
We don't need to be spending 25%
of our G&P on health insurance and health care services. What we should be
doing is spending something like 3% of the G&P on disease prevention and
education. If we were to do that, within one generation we could slash our
health care costs to perhaps 1/20th of what we're spending today. And that
would bring a significant enhancement in quality of life for everyone.
If you want to pay off the
national debt, take the money you would save from health care and pay down the
national debt with it. The quality of life would go up, the debt would go down,
and within a generation, we could be a nation of healthy, debt-free
individuals, rather than the nation we are now, which is regrettably the most
diseased population in the history of the world combined with the greatest
national debt ever witnessed in the history of the United States of America.
It took some real short-term
thinking to put us in this mess. And it's going to take some tough choices to
pull us out of it. Frankly, I'm not sure the politicians and voters have the
will to make any tough choices at all. As long as their drugs are paid for by
insurance, and as long as Medicare covers Viagra, they're sufficiently sedated
to prevent any real cry for reform.
That's part of what prescription
drugs really accomplish, by the way: the keep the population doped up in a
never-ending state of brain fog from which it is impossible to rally enough
people to demand real reform. Think about it: according to a new study published
in The Lancet, the Vioxx drug alone seems to have killed as many as 60,000
Americans. Where's the outcry? Where are the demonstrations? The marches on
Washington? The declaration of war against Big Pharma? If terrorists killed
60,000 Americans, we'd be bombing yet another nation into dust. If an herb
killed 60,000 Americans, the FDA would be screaming about how we have to
regulate all herbs to "protect the people!" If a virus killed 60,000
Americans, we'd call it one of the worst outbreaks since the 1918 bird flu
outbreak.
But when a prescription drug
kills 60,000 people, the FDA is all but silent. The CEO of a drug company warns
us not to "overreact." The newspaper headlines dedicate their space
to the Michael Jackson trial. The politicians argue about whether cell phones
should be banned on the road. And, don't forget, the Superbowl is coming, too!
Apparently, there are a lot more important things on the minds of Americans
than the fact that 60,000 of their family members, neighbors and loved ones
have been killed by just one drug. And hundreds of thousands more are killed
each year by other drugs, medical mistakes, failed surgical procedures and the
like.
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�What kind of society has this become anyway? Has this population
been so dumbed down, doped up and brainwashed by pharma-funded TV
advertisements that it can't see the crimes against humanity taking place right
before our very eyes? We get front-page news and priority cable coverage when
twelve people die in a train wreck. But when 5,000 times as many people die
from a prescription drug, there's no news coverage at all. Silence.
And you know why? Because it all
happens quietly. In hospital beds, family rooms, and ambulances. Each victim
slips away quietly, and their death certificate gets recorded with the phrase,
"natural causes." There's no footage to show on the evening news. No
sound bite. No wreckage. No explosion. No guided missiles or embedded war
footage. So it isn't newsworthy, apparently.
And, of course, there's the fact
that most of the news organizations in this country are beholden to the drug
companies for their financial lifeline (advertising). Don't discount the power
of half a billion dollars to influence the day's news. What news organization
would possibly want to expose the pharmaceutical catastrophe and risk angering
their top advertisers?
In looking at what's really
happening today, I'm astonished. It's beyond outrage, really. I'm just
astonished that people will take this treatment and think of it as normal.
Maybe it's the fluoride in the water supply. Maybe it's the brain-busting
hydrogenated oils in the foods, or the MSG found throughout every grocery store
in the country. Maybe it's all the TV programming. Or maybe you, me, and a
handful of other people who read this site have been time-warped into bizarro
world where all the laws of sanity have been reversed, and someone put the most
insane people of all in charge.
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