The more I hear people speaking of the current healthcare debate, the more I think that asking whether or not a universal healthcare bill is a good idea is fundamentally the wrong question. There is nothing in any of these bills that will overhaul the way people are treated medically, that will stop medical establishments from drugging people to death, that will encourage personal responsibility for our own health, that will cover less invasive, traditional medicines and alternative modalities. I’m not saying that we don’t need hospitals or doctors, but I am saying that we need to change the pill popping mentality, and doctor as ultimate health authority before anything else can really change in a positive way.
If more people have access to the same not-so-great healthcare, or possibly worse watered down healthcare, then, in the long run, more people might end up sicker than before, but with less debt. And is that the goal, just to bring costs down? What about quality, truly integrated, consumer focused healthcare? Shouldn't that be the goal? It just seems like right now everything being discussed is dollars and cents.
And if we are worried at all about the kind of legislation that could come through that takes away certain rights, or mandates this or that(which we probably should be), one thing we can always do is arm ourselves with knowledge, and learn how to use the natural remedies that exist in our backyards.
I took a semi-disappointing herbology workshop a few weeks ago, but one thing that I got out of it, was that herbs that heal really are all around us. They are inexpensive, can be self-sufficient, and they work. If you learn how to prepare and use them properly, you are already ahead of the game, no matter what happens. And that goes back to the personal responsibility argument…this is not a question of placing blame on a person who develops an illness, it is a question of informing yourself and making your healthcare decisions based on a well rounded perspective of the situation, instead of accepting the standard protocol for each disease as counseled to you by a single human person, trained in one philosophy of medicine.
My main concern is that it’s not just the system that is such a mess, but that the quality and choice of services is so limited that making it cheaper will only compound the problem and further distract everyone from the very real issue of people getting sicker and sicker both because of the choices they make on their own, and with the help of their healthcare providers offering one sided solutions to multi-faceted problems.
Yikes, sorry for being so ranty.
