Where's the health
in health reform?
On the heels of frightening statistics about how diseased the U.S.
population has become in the last three decades, there's a lot of
talk these days about health care reform. The uninsured need coverage.
Senior citizens on fixed incomes need to be able to afford their
medications. The mentally disturbed need to be treated. Children
need their medicine, we're told.
But whether the solutions come from the far left (socialized medicine)
or the far right (free drugs for seniors!), there's one glaring problem
in all the talk about health care reform: nobody is talking about
fixing the health problem.
The entire debate about health care has been framed in terms of
a financial crisis. The only thing wrong with peoples' health, we're
told, is that there's not enough money to treat everybody. If we
only had more money for drugs, more money for surgery, and more money
to find that elusive cure for cancer we've been promised since the
1970's, then all our health care concerns would be a thing of the
past.
All of this, of course, is a calculated distraction from the real
health problem in this country. And that problem, put bluntly, stems
from the fact that we have known toxins in the food supply, we have
a legalized prescription drug industry that kills 100,000 Americans
each year (even according to the defenders of organized medicine),
and our government regulators (the Food and Drug Administration and
the U.S. Department of Agriculture) appear to be so deeply dedicated
to promoting the very industries they're supposed to regulate that
public safety has been all but abandoned.
In other words, the health of our population is collapsing not because
we don't have enough drugs, but because we have allowed the creation
of unholy alliances between government and profit-hungry private
industry that result in the systemic poisoning of our people. They
are poisoned with hydrogenated oils, chemical sweeteners, and artificial
colors made from petroleum products. They're poisoned by prescription
drugs that cloud their minds, alter their brain chemistry and kill
them with strokes and heart attacks.
Just one class of prescription drugs, COX-2 inhibitors, has now
killed more Americans than died during the entire Vietnam War, and
that's according to the FDA's own whistleblower, Dr. David Graham
(a senior drug safety researcher). Two months ago, a rigged FDA panel
-- made up largely of people with financial ties to drug companies
-- decided that killing 60,000 Americans is not enough to actually
ban a drug, so they stamped it as "safe" and now these
drugs are right back on the market, being sold to millions.
And yet the health care reform debate rages on, focusing on how
we can make these dangerous drugs more affordable to people. This
is how the federal government comes up with nonsensical ideas like
the Medicare "drug discount card." If senior citizens sign
up, they can buy drugs in the U.S. at monopoly prices that are only
500% more expensive than the same drugs in Canada, Europe or Mexico.
But this is a huge savings (we're told) over the 700% markup people
usually pay in the United States, thanks to a policy of drug protectionism
fully enforced by the FDA. Our government claims to support free
trade, unless of course it harms the profits of politically-connected
corporations like those who characterize Big Pharma.
All of this, of course, is Big Government at its finest. And it's
all being done for your own protection, didn't you know? Drugs from
Canada are very, very dangerous, we've been told. (I have a question:
if drugs from Canada started killing Americans, how would we know?
So many Americans are falling over dead from prescription drugs right
now that it would be hard to sort them out.)
If that's not enough, Big Government USA has more solutions for
you, too. Don't worry about your food choice or diet, just be sure
to drink lots of milk, because the dairy industry is tight with the
feds. Don't worry about that mad cow disease from a Texas cow (that
reluctantly took the USDA seven months and three rounds of testing
to finally admit), because the beef industry has executives in key
positions at the USDA, and they're out to protect your health, too.
Don't worry about all the children being drugged up with antidepressant
drugs -- the very same drugs that have been banned from use in children
in the U.K. The kids need those drugs. Their brain chemistry needs
a fixin'.
Come to think of it, don't worry about anything. Just keep working
at that job, filing your annual taxes, and writing off 25% (or more)
of your discretionary income on drugs, surgical procedures and chemotherapy.
And when you die broke, you'll be in good company: nearly one-third
of personal bankruptcies in this country are now due to medical bills.
Boy, do we have a solution for you!
Uncle Sam will soon try to sell you a new health care solution. It's
called socialized medicine, and what it means is that everybody
is still just as sick as they were before, but now the whole system
is streamlined, with astounding new efficiencies, because it will
be managed and coordinated by the most efficient, compassionate
administrative system in the world: the U.S. government.
I can't wait to start standing in line.
And nowhere will you hear anything about what should really be done
to prevent chronic disease and enhance health in this country. Things
like banning all hydrogenated oils, banning the advertising of junk
foods to children, banning direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription
drugs, and making some long-deserved criminal arrests of key executives
at drug companies for hiding what they've known for a long, long
time: that their products outright kill people.
Health care reform is meaningless without health reform. You can't
alter the health of the population unless you address the underlying
causes of disease: junk foods, toxic food additives and ingredients,
overzealous drug promoters, lack of fresh air, sunlight and water,
and nutritionally ignorant doctors who still don't teach patients
how to be healthy.
If we limit our debate to who gets health benefits and who pays
for them, we will only find ourselves funding an increasingly disastrous
system of financial life support for chronic disease. Because, let's
face it, our modern health care system isn't health care at all:
it's a disease management system. It doesn't teach prevention (mammograms
aren't prevention, they're detection), it doesn't teach nutrition
(many doctors still don't believe foods have anything to do with
health), but it sure does teach dependence on the system.
So prepare to cover your ears as this health care reform debate
gets underway, especially during the run-up to the 2008 election.
Health care reform will be the hot topic. Republicans will say they're
going to save the nation by drugging everybody. Democrats will say
they're going to save the nation by giving us all equally bad medical
care. But nobody will be talking about the issue that matters: actually
making people healthier.
Treating disease is big business in this country
You see, disease is big business, while health means a loss of revenues.
Disease keeps people dependent on the system, while health sets
people free. Disease turns individuals into victims, while health
turns them into capable human beings. Disease is about centralized
authority and control, while health is about individual freedoms
and free thinking.
That's why you'll never hear any politician, any government, or
any disease-care business teaching people how to be healthy. The
ideas of health, freedom and free will go against everything they
stand for. They need a crisis so that the people have to come to
them for answers. They need a crisis to justify profit-building programs
(mandatory mental health screening for everyone!) that keep them
in business. They need a crisis to get elected.
Once they get elected, they will consistently ally with the health-harming
corporations that keep people diseased. Consider Connecticut Governor
Jodi Rell, who recently vetoed a hard-won bill that would have banned
junk food in public schools. With 10% of Connecticut's high school
students now overweight, Governor Jodi Rell sided with the soda companies.
Don't be fooled by the words of politicians when it comes to health
care reform. Don't be fooled by the frame of the debate. They're
debating a distraction while ignoring the fundamental question: how
will we make our people healthier?
Until we answer that question, we will be mired in chronic disease,
skyrocketing health care costs and bankruptcy at all levels: personal,
corporate and government. We will continue to lose our cost competitiveness
in the global marketplace, we will be unable to educate our health-impaired
youth (Johnny can't learn too well 'cuz his brain is malnourished),
and we will soon find that we have ventured too far down the path
of national health ruin to reverse it. |