The "health care crisis" can be largely described by two characteristics: too much money spent for too little health.
The modern American state of health care is dominated by two practices: (1) the medical model that relies on surgery and pharmaceutical drugs and (2) medical care paid for and controlled by insurance companies which routinely deny coverage to presumably high-risk people and deny payment for many treatments, especially those outside the dominant medical model like acupuncture and homeopathy.
The true causes of illness are ignored and denied: poor diet, poor exercise, and environmental poisons.
The only diet that can provide robust health is dense in nutrients and free of poisons. There is no room in this diet for processed foods, refined grains and fats, genetically modified foods, and irradiated foods.
The health care crisis is the result of a Gordian knot which will prove impervious to lawmaking and money. What can succeed is an approach focused on addressing the true causes of illness: (1) Support a food production and delivery system that provides nutrient-dense foods to all. (2) Prevent and remove environmental poisons. (3) Support regular exercise for all. (4) Support meditation for all.
These actions are a threat to the status quo. Industrial agriculture cannot provide nutrient-dense foods. Environmental poisons are by-products of industry, and have long been sanctioned by the government, especially the FDA. The huge drug companies, Big Pharma, rely on the use of their products in the dominant medical model.
What passes for discussion of what to do about the health care crisis is dominated by the issue of money, and this is mostly limited to the question of who pays. This topic clearly reflects the influence of the insurance companies, whose sole reason for existence is profit. Legally requiring all people to carry health insurance can have only one result: more profit for the insurance companies. A lot of buzz about the financial underpinnings of Medicare only serves to create fear and a willingness to entrust "solutions" to private enterprise. This approach is patently crazy as it is private enterprise that got us here.
Focusing on money is absolutely the wrong approach. What is needed is a focus on the causes of poor health. Secondary actions can: (1) limit the abuses of insurance companies, (2) change the tax laws that deal with medical expenses to incent individuals to do the right thing, (3) find an end to employer-paid insurance, and (4) raise the so-called "alternative" medical modalities to an equal footing with the AMA's concept of medicine.
This is a big undertaking that will be resisted by those corporations that are a part of the problem. It will also be resisted by individuals who do not understand illness and are frightened by change. Governments at all levels can adopt strategies to accomplish reform that are subtle and non-confrontational.
We can do this!
Created: 12-1-2009.