Showing posts with label natural medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label natural medicine. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Does Obama's "health care reform" actually reform anything?

Does Obama's "health care reform" actually reform anything?


Or does it keep the same corrupt system in place, while robbing Americans of their freedoms?


Health Ranger Mike Adams explores those two important questions in the following article.


No matter how you feel about Obama, the Democrats, the Republicans, or the concept of "health care reform" in general, you really need to know the answer to those two simple questions before you make a final decision.


-- Spencer


(Reprinted with permission from www.NaturalNews.com)

(NaturalNews) Today's article on health care reform has stirred up an unexpectedly vocal debate among NaturalNews readers about health care reform.


Some have expressed confusion over the NaturalNews position on health care reform: Are we for it? Against it? Do we support Obama? Do we support socialized medicine?

This article is intended to clarify our position. Ultimately, we here at NaturalNews believe very strongly in three things relevant to this debate:

#1) Natural medicine and the healing power of the human body and spirit.

#2) Personal liberty and the non-intervention of Big Government in our day-to-day lives.

#3) Personal responsibility and free will to do what we wish with our own lives as long as it does not involve harming others.

We are also firmly opposed to the pharmaceutical cartel, the highly corrupt and ineffective health insurance industry and government regulators like the FDA and FTC who continue to enforce this failed medical monopoly upon the American people.

Based on these principles, we must maintain strong opposition to any plan -- from any President -- that would remove choice from consumers and force people to pay their hard-earned money into a system that financially supports precisely those institutions that we oppose (Big Pharma, health insurance corporations, etc.).

In theory, I am personally a strong advocate of universal care, where every person is covered under a single plan that's affordable and efficient. But when that plan continues to focus on pushing pharmaceuticals and surgery over nutrition and prevention, I cannot in good conscience lend it my support. To do so would be a blatant violation of my opposition to Big Pharma, vaccines and the health freedom oppressions of the FDA and FTC.

While the current sick-care system operating in America today is clearly broken, you cannot fix one failed system by mandating another failed system.


We agree that health care needs serious reform, and in fact, I personally put together one of the most innovative health care reform plans that has yet been proposed in America. It's called the Health Revolution Petition, and you can read its details here: www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org

That petition, which is essentially a "hybrid socialized medicine solution," preserves freedom of choice, individual liberty, free speech and personal responsibility while ending the tyranny of the FDA and the medical monopolies being run in this country right now by Big Pharma, cancer clinics, and other medical groups.


My solution restores health freedom to the People while requiring Americans to take some measure of responsibility for their own health outcomes by participating in their personal choices about where they spend their health care dollars. That's why it has earned the endorsement of the Life Extension Foundation and numerous health freedom organizations, including Citizens for Health and American Association for Health Freedom.

It is a universal care voucher system that allows the American people to spend health care vouchers on anything that improves their health: Dietary supplementation, herbal medicine, gym memberships, body therapies or even conventional medicine, if they so choose. It puts people back in control over their health care decisions rather than Big Government.


Why Big Government can't run a successful health care system based on pharmaceuticals


When it comes to health care reform, a government-run system that continues to rely on pharmaceutical medicine, chemotherapy and vaccinations is clearly headed for failure even before it gets off the ground. It will only give us, as is popularly stated on the 'net, a system that has "all the efficiency of the Post Office, the compassion of the IRS and the pricing structure of a Pentagon toilet seat."

Government has already proven itself to be utterly incapable of controlling health care costs in any meaningful way -- it was the Bush Administration, for example, that mandated the federal government could not negotiate Medicare price discounts on volume purchases from drug companies, thereby guaranteeing a windfall of monopoly-priced profits for Big Pharma at taxpayers' expense.

Even worse, government does not understand how to support good health. The government's "My Pyramid" food guide is a nutritional disaster; the FDA is operating as the marketing branch of Big Pharma; and U.S. RDA numbers describing minimal requirements for nutrient intake are so hopelessly outdated that they were obsolete in the 1970's. President Obama's nomination for U.S. Surgeon General is nearly obese, for crying out loud!

But it's not just the fact that Obama's proposed health care reform plan is wrong-headed; it's the fact that the entire discussion about health care reform doesn't even include the most important issues such as banning junk food advertising, reeling in Big Pharma's influence over medicine, ending FDA censorship and tyranny, and legalizing the practice of natural medicine across America. These elements, which are crucial to any meaningful health reform, remain utterly ignored in the current health reform plan.

Without these issues being honestly addressed, there can be no health care reform. Sure, you can play a financial shell game and change who pays for sickness and disease, but you can't take a nation of diseased, bankrupt citizens and make them healthy and productive by forcing them all to pay into the very same broken system of medicine and junk food consumerism that made them all sick in the first place!

By stating my opposition to Obama's health care reform plan, in no way am I endorsing the current system or supporting the health insurance companies. The current system is a disaster.


But if we hope to see real improvements, we cannot simply replace one disaster with another. We must take a quantum leap beyond the failures of modern medicine and roll out a new health care system based on improving health.


Unfortunately, the currently-proposed health care reforms fail to do this. They offer only annoying variations on the same old tune: More drugs and surgery for everyone.


We need serious health care reform


When people ask me, "Why are you attacking Obama's health care reform?" I can only answer: What health care reform?


Obama isn't really proposing any reform at all, he's just changing who pays for disease (while taking away more of your freedoms in the process).


If Obama comes up with a serious reform plan that actually includes elements of real reform that would end the monopoly of pharmaceutical medicine and reinstate genuine health freedom for consumers, doctors and supplement makers, then we'll have something to talk about, and I would gladly support it.

Until then, this whole thing is just an exercise in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as they say. America is going bankrupt. The health of its people is disastrously poor. More and more people are not merely jobless, but homeless too. Nutritional deficiencies are dangerously widespread and could be easily corrected, but there is no effort in Obama's health care "reform" plan to correct the very nutritional deficiencies that cause degenerative disease in the first place. (A dollar a day in nutrients could work miracles for the health of our people...)

Essentially, Obama's Big Government health plan is just business as usual with a new twist: Now you're FORCED to pay into the very system that's making you sick. So in addition to losing your health and losing your paycheck in sky-high insurance premiums, you also now lose your freedom at the same time. That's no improvement. That's an insult to the American people.

These are the reasons why myself and NaturalNews strongly oppose Obama's current health care "reform" plan (if you can call it that). I would oppose this same plan with the same firmness regardless of who proposed it: Democrat, Republican or otherwise.


This isn't about favoring one party over another: I was one of the most outspoken internet writers against the Bush Administration's cozy relationship with Big Pharma, in fact. But I don't exercise party loyalty to anyone.


My loyalty is to the rights and freedoms of the American people, and I cannot support any health care reform plan -- regardless of whose name is on it -- if it compromises the health freedoms of the American people while failing to address the root causes of our national health care problems.

I can confidently predict America will not see any meaningful health care reform unless some radical changes are made in the whole sick-care profit system.


As long as disease remains profitable (i.e. there is profit to be made in sickness), profit-driven corporations will always find a way to keep people sick and exploit the situation for maximum profit.


Any nation that hopes to have lasting health must take the profit out of sickness, support nutritional medicine and natural medicine and greatly limit the influence of pharmaceutical companies, cancer clinics and other highly destructive institutions that currently dominate our western medical system.

You can't have a prosperous nation when your people are sick and broke. And Obama's Big Government health care proposal will absolutely guarantee that people stay both sick and broke.


Is real reform impossible in this political climate?


At the same time, you can't exactly blame Obama for all this. The current power players in the medical-industrial complex are so entrenched in Washington -- with thousands of lobbyists and billions of dollars to throw around -- that real reform is virtually impossible today. There's too much profit to be made in sickness and disease for any meaningful reform to happen.


Even if Obama wanted to end the era of chemical medicine and unleash a new age of natural healing and health freedom (and maybe he wants to), it would be politically impossible for him to accomplish this in America today. Imagine the backlash if Obama announced that natural medicine would no longer be regulated by the FDA... the pharmaceutical lobby would have a fit, and Obama would be pressured by drug-pushing physicians to back off.

This is one of the reasons why there can be no meaningful reform until the current power structures that are enforcing this medical monopoly are removed from the picture. And that won't happen without some truly radical reforms that enact sweeping changes like ending all patent protection for pharmaceuticals and ending FDA / FTC tyranny and censorship of dietary supplements and natural remedies. Only big, sweeping changes can shake up our world sufficiently to see real reform in health care.

That's why I don't consider Obama's plan to qualify as "reforming" anything. It's more like "rearranging" the current failed system and trying to market it to the American people as something new that really isn't.

In America today, we already know how to prevent 90% of all cancers. We know how to reverse type-2 diabetes, how to end most heart attack deaths and how to greatly improve longevity and quality of life. None of these solutions are part of any current health care plan being considered in Washington from either political party.


As far as I'm concerned, both parties have utterly failed to come up with any reform proposals that would genuinely improve the health of the American people. Both parties have sold out to special interests and powerful corporations, leaving the People diseased and broke.

Like I said, it's business as usual in the United States of America.

Americans threatened with jail time, huge fines for refusing to buy health insurance

Don't want to go to jail for refusing to participate in government-run health care (read: socialized medicine)?

Don't want to pay the $25,000 fine?

You may not be able to avoid it if certain Democrat politicians have their way.

That's why it's important to call your Senate representative and tell them "No!" to government-run health care.

Read Mike Adams article below, and learn what Obamacare now has in store for those who prefer to remain healthy and strong through natural means rather than becoming slaves to prescription drugs and the orthodox medical system with its cut, burn and drug mentality.

Don't allow your elected representatives to criminalize self-reliance, personal responsibility and rugged individualism -- the three key factors that made this country great from its very inception.

-- Spencer

Reprinted with permission from
http://www.naturalnews.com/...

NaturalNews -- There's a popular video circulating on the 'net right now about how to escape handcuffs without using a key. Americans are watching the video to bone up on essential skills that will soon be needed for health care reform, it seems, since the new laws that are about to be put in place call for Americans to be arrested and thrown in jail if they refuse to buy health insurance.

This has now been confirmed by Tom Barthold, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, in a hand-written note to a Republican Senator (
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0...). And it's not merely about jail time; it's also about the $25,000 fine that could be levied by the IRS against individuals who refuse to buy health insurance.

That this is even being considered just boggles the mind. If a person is too broke to afford health insurance right now, how are they supposed to be able to buy it after paying a $25,000 fine and spending a year in prison?

As Paul Craig Roberts brilliantly pointed out in a recent essay, this is like trying to solve the homeless problem by forcing homeless people to buy a home, then throwing them in prison when they can't afford to. Up to twelve U.S. states are now considering legislation to override the federal government's intent to require mandatory health insurance (
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2230521...) and (http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/1...).


There's even a growing argument that requiring Americans to buy health insurance is unconstitutional (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/0...).


And there's no question that imposing a penalty on Americans who refuse to buy health insurance is, indeed, a new tax (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e...).

There's never enough money to pay for a nation full of sick people


The current health care disaster in America is not simply a problem of people refusing to buy health insurance; it's an issue of people not being able to afford to buy health insurance. When the annual insurance premium for a family of four is something above $13,000, that's a terrible financial burden that many Americans simply can't afford to pay -- especially when so many people have lost their jobs due to the faltering economy.

The brutal facts of the matter are inescapable: The American people are too broke to buy their own health insurance, and the American government is too broke to buy it for them. The whole nation is going bankrupt over runaway health care costs. And why? I hate to invoke the "I told you so" phrase in a crisis like this, but the reasons for all this have been apparent for many years, and we've been regularly reporting them on NaturalNews: Our national "health care" system is really a "sick care" system that pushes deadly chemicals and medically-unjustified surgical procedures instead of teaching people how to stay well.

As long as junk food companies and pharmaceutical companies are allowed to run advertisements on television, and as long as the FDA and FTC continue their campaigns of censorship against nutritional cures and natural remedies, we will always have a health care crisis. You know why? Because no nation in the world can afford to foot the bill for a country full of sick people.


We're all criminals?

President Barack Obama wants to label me a criminal. He wants to fine me twenty-five thousand dollars and throw me in prison for one year for my refusal to pay money into a corrupt, broken sick care system.

Note that the people who are destroying their own health -- and putting huge cost burdens on the health care system -- are not considered criminals at all. People can destroy their own bodies through junk foods, toxic chemicals and substance abuse... but as long as they pay up, they're considered "good Americans" who are participating in the health care system.


Meanwhile, people like me who take care of our own health, who place no burden whatsoever on the health care system, and who refuse to pay mandatory premiums into a corrupt health insurance industry are going to be threatened with arrest and imprisonment.

This disturbing fact tells me that Obama, much like Bush before him, has forgotten what freedom is. America is being turned into a medical police state where parents have their children stolen away by cancer clinics (true story), where chemical injections are enforced at gunpoint (also true), and where unaffordable, inefficient and utterly ineffective "sick care" is forced upon citizens with or without their consent. The whole premise of democracy is being destroyed in this quest to appease the sick care system that preys on upon the American people with each passing year.

"But wait," some people say. "Full participation is all for the greater good."

No, not really. What would be best for the greater good would be the transformation of the FDA and FTC into agencies that actually protect the public instead of Big Pharma. The greater good would be served by legalizing free speech for nutritional supplements and natural remedies, ending the tyranny of attacks against medical marijuana, and sending all the MDs back to medical school so they could learn something about nutrition.

The greater good is in no way served by forcing Americans to funnel yet more money into a corrupt, broken system of dishonest insurance companies and unethical hospitals pumping people full of deadly pharmaceutical chemicals. That system is dead. It has failed, and it has no place in the future of any successful nation.

If we don't soon recognize this fact and seek to advance into a new era of natural medicine and disease prevention, this sick-care medical industry will wring every last dollar from the U.S. economy until the American people find themselves diseased, penniless and medically enslaved. (And we're already half-way there...)

Thanks to the sick-care policies of previous presidential administrations, the American people today have already lost their health. And now, with Obama's reform proposals, they are about to lose their freedoms, too.

Albert Einstein once said, "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." And yet Obama is bringing no genuinely new thinking to the table on health care reform; he's just changing who pays for disease. Now, more than ever, our national leaders need to not just think outside the box; they need to stomp on the box, disassemble the box, throw the box in the recycling bin and forget there ever was a box. They need revolutionary solutions that can help this country overcome its addiction to pharmaceuticals and junk food while unleashing a new era of personal health combined with personal responsibility.

Until that happens, all this talk about health care reform is just the senseless animation of lips and vocal chords without purpose.

Additional sources for this story include:
Politico
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0...
American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog...
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/0...
Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e...