Home
Newsletter
Events
Blogs
Reports
Graphics
RSS
About Us
Support
Write for Us
Media Info
Advertising Info
Health insurance

The health insurance problem is not an insurance problem, it is a health problem

Wednesday, February 02, 2005
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: health insurance, health care, health care reform


Most Viewed Articles
https://www.naturalnews.com/004107.html
Delicious
diaspora
Print
Email
Share

When people start talking about health insurance reform and how to bring health insurance to the American people, they inevitably end up in a ridiculous discussion about how to negotiate the cost of drugs, how to provide drug discounts to senior citizens, or how to engage in a system of managed care that denies medical services to certain groups. It's all a rather useless exercise in shifting paperwork, blame, or money from the pockets of one organization to another. And in the end, it helps no one.

Health insurance reform needs to focus on the health, not the insurance, because you can never solve a problem by shifting paperwork to another party or bu denying services to an ever-expanding group of people. It's similar to the way in which the federal government wants to solve social security: just keep raising the qualification age until it's so high that almost nobody lives that long. How's that for security? "If you live long enough, we'll even pay you back all the money you worked for!"

In the realm of health insurance, we need to start talking about disease prevention. The only way we're going to lower the costs in the long run is if we make our population healthier. And the only way we're going to make people healthier is if we start admitting the truth about the detrimental health effects of prescription drugs, processed foods, junk foods, soft drinks, lack of physical exercise and so on, and then start educating people about how to take control of their health and reduce their risk of ever experiencing chronic disease. That's how you solve the health insurance problem: by making people healthy. What a novel idea, huh?

Right now people are getting all the wrong messages about their health. They are being told that unhealthy foods are good for them. The FDA has approved health claims that mislead consumers into thinking things like sugary oatmeal is good for your heart because it contains oats. It's a ridiculous claim. And yet the legitimate food claims -- like olive oil prevents breast cancer, garlic prevents cancer, raw nuts prevent heart disease -- are not allowed at all. In fact, those are outlawed by the FDA. So today we have a regulatory environment that actually prevents people from learning the truth about foods that could help prevent disease. Thank goodness the FDA is protecting us from all those dangerous health claims!

When was the last time the FDA ever allowed the claim that blueberries reduce LDL cholesterol? You'll never see that claim because the blueberry companies aren't going to engage in the corruption, bribery, and political influence that would normally be required for the FDA to approve something. Blueberries are just blueberries. They are straight from nature. They are healthy. And they actually lower bad cholesterol and improve cardiovascular health regardless of whether or not the FDA allows such a claim.

Getting back to health insurance, you have to remember that the health insurance business is just that – a business. There are a lot of people making money pushing paper, providing unnecessary medical procedures to the public and selling prescription drugs over and over again to people who are undoubtedly suffering from downright fatal side effects from the long-term consumption of such drugs. It's big business and thus there is no real financial incentive for anyone to reform the way health insurance works right now. Let's face it: sick people generate revenues. It doesn't mean there's some evil conspiracy behind it all, it just means that there's no financial incentive to teach people how to be healthy.

Who makes money if people get healthier? Well, nobody does! The only people who benefit from widespread health are the individuals themselves. In fact, billions of dollars in profits would be lost by Big Pharma if the country were suddenly swept up by a wave of health. So don't look for any serious health insurance or health care reform in your lifetime. Nearly every public discussion about these topics is nothing but sleight of hand designed to distract you from the real problem, which is the disease-care industry and food & beverage industries that have no incentive to help people get healthier.

Here's a final question in all of this: Why is it that other countries can provide meaningful, full coverage health insurance for their entire population at the equivalent of about $25/month? Of course, I am referring to Taiwan. A country that provides full service health coverage for only $25/month. And that includes maternity care, dental care, everything! And it's the same $25 whether you're 16 or 60, regardless of your health history. You can't be disqualified as long as you're a Taiwan citizen.

Yet in the United States, some people are being charged $1000 per month for only partial coverage. Why is that? Because health insurance is extremely inefficient. Probably 80-90% of the money that goes into health insurance is falling into the pockets of people who do nothing but push paper around. It's not going to the bottom line services that people really need. And virtually none of it is going to disease prevention education or public advertising campaigns that would inform people about how to take charge of their own health and prevent chronic disease.

So all of this money is just going down a black hole. It's utterly wasted. And today, the money spent on health care comprises a significant portion of G&P. Something like $1 out of every $4 spent in this country is spent on health care. We've also just learned that 50% of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills. Think about that for a moment: the disease-care industry is bankrupting our families and our nation. Only a fool would think the answer is to introduce a drug discount card or some other such nonsense. That's like tossing a cup of water on a raging house fire.

We don't need to be spending 25% of our G&P on health insurance and health care services. What we should be doing is spending something like 3% of the G&P on disease prevention and education. If we were to do that, within one generation we could slash our health care costs to perhaps 1/20th of what we're spending today. And that would bring a significant enhancement in quality of life for everyone.

If you want to pay off the national debt, take the money you would save from health care and pay down the national debt with it. The quality of life would go up, the debt would go down, and within a generation, we could be a nation of healthy, debt-free individuals, rather than the nation we are now, which is regrettably the most diseased population in the history of the world combined with the greatest national debt ever witnessed in the history of the United States of America.

It took some real short-term thinking to put us in this mess. And it's going to take some tough choices to pull us out of it. Frankly, I'm not sure the politicians and voters have the will to make any tough choices at all. As long as their drugs are paid for by insurance, and as long as Medicare covers Viagra, they're sufficiently sedated to prevent any real cry for reform.

That's part of what prescription drugs really accomplish, by the way: the keep the population doped up in a never-ending state of brain fog from which it is impossible to rally enough people to demand real reform. Think about it: according to a new study published in The Lancet, the Vioxx drug alone seems to have killed as many as 60,000 Americans. Where's the outcry? Where are the demonstrations? The marches on Washington? The declaration of war against Big Pharma? If terrorists killed 60,000 Americans, we'd be bombing yet another nation into dust. If an herb killed 60,000 Americans, the FDA would be screaming about how we have to regulate all herbs to "protect the people!" If a virus killed 60,000 Americans, we'd call it one of the worst outbreaks since the 1918 bird flu outbreak.

But when a prescription drug kills 60,000 people, the FDA is all but silent. The CEO of a drug company warns us not to "overreact." The newspaper headlines dedicate their space to the Michael Jackson trial. The politicians argue about whether cell phones should be banned on the road. And, don't forget, the Superbowl is coming, too! Apparently, there are a lot more important things on the minds of Americans than the fact that 60,000 of their family members, neighbors and loved ones have been killed by just one drug. And hundreds of thousands more are killed each year by other drugs, medical mistakes, failed surgical procedures and the like.

What kind of society has this become anyway? Has this population been so dumbed down, doped up and brainwashed by pharma-funded TV advertisements that it can't see the crimes against humanity taking place right before our very eyes? We get front-page news and priority cable coverage when twelve people die in a train wreck. But when 5,000 times as many people die from a prescription drug, there's no news coverage at all. Silence.

And you know why? Because it all happens quietly. In hospital beds, family rooms, and ambulances. Each victim slips away quietly, and their death certificate gets recorded with the phrase, "natural causes." There's no footage to show on the evening news. No sound bite. No wreckage. No explosion. No guided missiles or embedded war footage. So it isn't newsworthy, apparently.

And, of course, there's the fact that most of the news organizations in this country are beholden to the drug companies for their financial lifeline (advertising). Don't discount the power of half a billion dollars to influence the day's news. What news organization would possibly want to expose the pharmaceutical catastrophe and risk angering their top advertisers?

In looking at what's really happening today, I'm astonished. It's beyond outrage, really. I'm just astonished that people will take this treatment and think of it as normal. Maybe it's the fluoride in the water supply. Maybe it's the brain-busting hydrogenated oils in the foods, or the MSG found throughout every grocery store in the country. Maybe it's all the TV programming. Or maybe you, me, and a handful of other people who read this site have been time-warped into bizarro world where all the laws of sanity have been reversed, and someone put the most insane people of all in charge.


Receive Our Free Email Newsletter

Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.




About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

comments powered by Disqus



Natural News Wire (Sponsored Content)

Science.News
Science News & Studies
Medicine.News
Medicine News and Information
Food.News
Food News & Studies
Health.News
Health News & Studies
Herbs.News
Herbs News & Information
Pollution.News
Pollution News & Studies
Cancer.News
Cancer News & Studies
Climate.News
Climate News & Studies
Survival.News
Survival News & Information
Gear.News
Gear News & Information
Glitch.News
News covering technology, stocks, hackers, and more