Posted on October 16, 2009 - by Rasham

Health Reform Yourself

We Depend on Technology/Doctors for Survival

The health care debate is a topic of conversation from which I usually shy away: I am bored with its constant inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and the futility of it all. Health care for everyone? No. It will never happen. And while we think we have a right to inexpensive care, treatment, tests, procedures, diagnosis and results, we have more importantly the right to know that the conflict of health care is a matter that cannot be resolved by the policies and politics of our finest liberal creations.

You know that lollipop image that comes to mind when you think of your childhood visits to see the man whom mommy called ‘doctor’ but who reminded you more of what Santa would appear if he colored his eyes with pencil lead and wiped his beard with a short piece of dulled sandpaper?

Oh memories: doctor visits are as much a part of any childhood as training wheels and power pads, and are as normal today as they were in Maine in the early 1960’s, when a curious man by the name of Jack Wennburg began accumulating valuable though unnerving information regarding medical practice in the United States. His findings aren’t shocking: they gracefully merge with the heartless currents that propel our civilization.

From the moment we are born so also is born a medical record bearing our name, the contents of which are oddly obscured and grow to represent the choices of not only ourselves, but of our doctors, hospital executives, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, administrators, consultants, secretaries, and assistants alike.

Where the manner in which we live surely influences our fluctuating health so does the questionable behavior of our health care practitioners. We are taught to understand that our healthcare system preserves the purity of the patient/doctor relationship, that we are safe in the hands of an educated professional, that his knowledge of our body far exceeds our remedial understanding of ourselves, and in having great respect of his italicized diploma expensively framed we can trust his opinion, estimations, judgments, and referrals.  This can be true: I am in no way demeaning the glorified intellect of a man who trains for years beyond that of his Ivy League pals. What I intend to advocate is this: there are so many other players in the healthcare game; though it may be a patient and her doctor within the walls of a hospital room, the influencing factors which drive his decisions have little to do with empathy and in no way reflect an honest concern for betterment and health.

Health care is a complicated business which relies on the faithful cooperation of a patient to purchase health insurance and attend appointments when recommended and as needed. As a loyal participant in this complicated scheme, the doctor has to ensure that his needs are met as well. He avoids malpractice suits by exhausting all resources for diagnosis, by subjecting the patient to a plethora of tests and immunizations, by referring the patient to specialized doctors, by recommending procedures he knows to be overcompensating the patient’s condition; he engages his patient with a ‘just to make sure’ attitude, which sends the patient on an expensive journey through the healthcare maze in an effort to quiet all haunting possibilities and paranoid suspicions. In believing that the doctor’s requests are sincere the patient plays like a puppet in his hands, affirmed by the subconscious American mantra that more health care is better health care.

The business of health care is a competitive one, where there are as many doctors as there are fish in the sea, and where patients have some freedom in choosing their medical mate. When matched, a doctor’s patient thus becomes a very valuable source of reliable income. The patient is milked, visiting and revisiting the doctor several times a season for a number of fabricated reasons, all the while under the assumption that it is in the best interest of his health to do so. Again, this may be the case, but often times what is truly being accomplished is patient abuse: the ignorant patient is highly fertile in bearing the monetary offspring of a doctor’s greedy intentions, and she will always and unknowingly choose the more expensive option, and as advised will return to him for future dates, behavior which is purely manipulated by her conniving professional counterpart: she will keep coming back, and so will her cash.

In addition, health care reform is tainted by the fact that the technology used in hospitals is quite expensive. There are medical supply companies who want to be included on pay-day, continually advancing and redefining the tools utilized in the modern world of western medicine. CAT scans, MRI’s, blood tests, biopsies, radiation therapy:  who pays for the availability of these resources? You, the patient. It has been said that the modern methods of doctors and his staff are no more effective in the advancement of patient health than the primitive traditions of doctors past (we are a very sick nation, statistics show we fall far behind other less advanced countries in terms of citizen health and mortality rates). We tend to believe that cutting edge equipment promises positive results, that it somehow is making us healthier; hence the more trust we can instill in its ability to cure our ailments. But hardly do we need these machines and microscopes which generally serve only to satisfy our insecurities and calm our worst fears. But they add to our tab, the doctor’s salary, the profit of everyone really, except the patient.  In essence, where there are less expensive ways to accomplish a medical conclusion, the team of doctors and his administrative, legal, pharmaceutical, and insurance squad would rather the patient be made to afford the illusory advantages of fancy techniques.

Of course the topic of pharmaceuticals cannot be ignored: drugs are very, very costly and very cleverly advertised. They are the chemical conclusion of expensive research sold by private companies for the purpose of stimulating a profit. Like a drug dealer to his drug lord the doctors are responsible for delivering the toxic prescription to the most ideal recipient, a patient whom the doctor feels may benefit from the drug, or in the least, will not immediately die from the recommended dosage.

The world of western health care is not to be understood as the media intends: it is in fact an intricate structure with many parties involved so as to sustain the private interests of the executive counsels in charge. Again, it’s a business, and as such, it is not to be entered into with optimism and expectations of honesty and good-will. The entire industry is structured around the gullibility of the patient: everyone profits when the patient believes she is sick, as the very thing being marketed and sold is health care by a system designed to bargain the welfare of an entire people.  In reality, the patient’s health is sacrificed from fear of lawsuit and loss of patient business, as well as with the integration of expensive advancements and the prescription of legal drugs. Besides the required disclaimers visible in small print on documents and pill bottles, a patient is never usually aware of the risks associated with trusting her doctor. Where she is mis-diagnosed, over diagnosed or undergoes a series of exhaustive tests beneath the harmful rays of technological radiation, the patient could be exposing herself to ill-inducing elements, realistically serving her with exposure to health harmful elements or surgeries all while under the assumption that she is on the road to recovery.

In terms of health care reform, I strongly encourage the exhausted and the weary, the sick and the frustrated to re-evaluate the reliance upon doctors and the industry alike. This type of medicine is designed to treat the symptoms of a person with a business approach, trial and error experimentation, insignificant renovations and subsequent recalls. The only sure way to advocate health care reform is to stay away from it: take care of yourself the way nature intended through nutrition, abstinence from all chemical substances, rest, and exercise.

Sound simple? That’s the beauty of it all: where western medicine seeks to complicate and execute trickery and beguile, natural medicine seeks to simplify and refine. It is simple because we are simple: take care of the human body and mind and we will flourish without the need for an annual check-up and chemical maintenance. Earth is our home: we are animals to be nourished, not test subjects for the sadistic enjoyment of our inhumane industry or the financial exploitation of its parts.

There are centers in this nation that can take the sick and make them healthy minus all contributions of western science and its money laundering pawns. There is a level of consciousness the human mind can access which removes the obsession for all things artificial and morally opposed. In every human born is the link to the knowledge of self-sufficiency and optimal survival: the modern process of life with all its distractions aims at diluting this inherent connection, spoiling the nature within as we have the nature all around. But it can be re-learned, re-formed, recycled and renewed: such is the era of holistic health care, of sustainability, within which the need for health care reform is not of critical importance.

In anticipation of being criticized for failure to mention cases of trauma or emergency I will say that health care is necessary and useful. If I were shot in the arm or bit by a rattlesnake I would be a fool to fix myself a macrobiotic meal after a session of acupuncture. There are certain injuries for which the hand of a western doctor is the safest application, and anti-venoms or prescription medicines which are derivatives of natural roots and herbs that can be suggested and administered.

Here we encounter the dilemma: we live in a risky society where explosive damage and sudden injury are always a possibility, and thus in the least a certain minimum amount of insurance is required so as to avoid outrageous and unexpected fees.

This minimum amount of insurance could and would be available to all citizens affordably if it were the case that the demand for healthcare were low. Health care is a business, and thus it operates on the conditions of business: if demand is low, profit is low; therefore cost is lowered to attract business. But the demand for health care is increasingly high because we have come to rely upon it for all our problems, issues, concerns, fears. We are dependant on it for answers, whereas we should learn to depend upon ourselves. As a nation we are sick with cancers, virus, allergies, depressions, immobility: the cause of which we attribute to bad luck and the cure for which we seek medical attention.

But the issue first is this: why are we so sick? There is poison in the food, the water, the soda, the stress, the pressures, the supplies, the materials, the air, the soil: it requires a certain level of openness to explore the lies and hypocrisies of our corporate suppliers, and a certain level of education to avoid such habits and commodities. Once we all begin to demand healthier options, organic options, sustainable options, American made options, they will supply it. We will be healthier, and our world will support it. Healthcare would be available to everyone cheaply because but a small population would demand it rigorously.

So you wanna argue about health care reform? Here’s an idea: let’s reduce health care costs by reducing our dependence upon it; we can do this by living healthy. Live healthy by way of education, which will grant liberation from brand names and acceptance of the life nature intended us to live.