Obamacare Opinion

Obamacare makes much needed improvements to Americas health insurance system. But its only a bandaid on a dam set to burst.

Have you heard enough rhetoric, pundit posturing and political scaremongering about the future of America’s health insurance? I hope you can indulge me a bit I want to offer a different perspective. Most of the debate I have heard is about the ideological merits of health insurance (should people have it?) and who should be paying for it (is there such a thing as a free lunch?).

The biggest issue I see is the lack of big-picture strategic thinking and evaluation. It reminds me of the rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when we engage in conversations whether a person should have health insurance, or at what level we should give him free support, or should we force him to pay for it.

Lets start with this: who is the most interested party in the health of all people in America? We all are! It should be the highest national interest to keep people healthy.

Is the government acting as if it were looking after the best interest of us all? Is it making sure that we are not injured, and if we get sick that we are restored to health using the most cost effective, least invasive, fastest working means? Are we all equal before the law, before the creator? Or are some of us more favored than others?

Police and fire protection seem like a fine idea that is working a lot like the idea of health protection. But in health care, we are not free and we are definitely not equal. Depending on your employer and its ability to negotiate, you will have minimal or deluxe coverage, or something in between. Imagine this: if we have national coverage, all American employers would be free to compete with the world without having to cost in the benefits. They could hire people and not worry about carrying the health plan! Instead, we have given the keys to our health to private interests: the insurance companies, and their best buddies, the pharmaceutical and medical industries.

Did you know that in Czech Republic (I go there often) the health insurers are legislated to keep administrative overhead to within 3.5% of the transaction? Why do American health insurance companies spend over 20%? Why are we so stupid and pay that fee? Is there no competition?

I believe the biggest issue is not THAT we should have insurance. We should. The bigger issue is WHAT is insured. If I was truly committed to the health of the nation and its productivity, I would be making sure that PREVENTION is the first item on the list, closely followed by FITNESS and effective treatments. It is the individual consumer who should decide how he wants to spend his resources. If a heart by-pass operation costs $50,000, how many months of preventive enzymes at $50 does it buy me? Here’s the math 1,000 months = 83 years! Half the population will die prematurely of heart disease, and most of it can be prevented with better nutrition and exercise.

The biggest enemy of your health is your behavior. We dig our graves with our teeth, and with our stupid habits. Nutrition, exercise, clothing, makeup, air, water. We fill and cover our bodies with dead food and toxic chemicals. We eat food that is devoid of nutrients our bodies need: enzymes, minerals, trace elements and a long list of necessary nutrients.

When you eat food bought in your grocery store or cooked in your fast food restaurant, you are eating food stripped of nutrients, yet filled with toxins. You can never eat enough to feel nourished. No sooner you finish a meal your body calls for more nutrients. So you eat again. You consume lots of calories, but not enough nutrients. Your body screams for more. No wonder you are gaining weight and cant keep it off!

When you get sick, health insurance is your worst enemy. People with insurance go for procedures not because they are needed, but because they are covered. And doctors compound the problem. Their entire belief system about health, illness, its causes and cures, is based on the wrong premise that healing comes from without, rather than from within. As if lack of health could be caused by lack of some concentrated pharmaceutical poison. A headache is NOT caused by a deficiency of a pain killer. That would mean that we evolved in a chemical factory, not in the tropical forest.

The only insurance solution that has a chance of working is when we establish universal coverage for catastrophic illness and couple it with high deductible on annual claims that allow us to claim all health and fitness related expenses as tax deductions. These would include drugs, supplements, therapies, fitness, and possibly even organic food and clean energized water all expenses related to care of our body. Consumers would soon enough figure out what works, and do the right thing. They are not stupid, they have only been taught to do stupid things.

Imagine what it would do for the employers when they would no longer have to pay health insurance coverage. They could just hand the same money to the employees. The insurance companies would have a fraction of the claims to process that they do now, thanks to the high deductible.

So the point of my rant:
America is being bankrupted by the high cost of its misdirected sickness treatment programs and insurance. We have just added another 40 million people into the pool of doing the wrong thing. To me this can only mean that we are heading for the inevitable even faster.

Do you think the new health care bill does enough to address the chronic health issues facing Americans?

Author: Life Enthusiast Staff