Originally published September 29 2009
Why NaturalNews opposes Obama's health care "reform" plan: a statement of principles
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(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. It 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.
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