Bernardo de La Paz
Bernardo de La Paz's JournalWhat I'd like is a real Health Industry, not the Disease Industry we have
The Disease Industry caters to every little fluctuation that people have and creates lots of hypochondriacs who don't take care of the basic issues in their lives.
Got the sniffles? Take a pill! Forget about keeping warm and drinking lots of fluid. Mask the symptoms and run yourself ragged not giving the body a chance to heal.
Got a mild headache? Take a pain reliever and don't attend to the underlying dehydration (or whatever it might be).
Got a pulled muscle? Take a pill and feel no pain! That way you can re-injure the muscle repeatedly and prevent it from healing properly.
Then people get in the habit of taking pills for this and that and everything. Meanwhile they smoke, eat, drink, and laze around to excess.
People need to be more pro-active about health and resist the urge to make every little ache / pain / inconvenience go away. Paradoxically, this means getting more in touch with our own bodies, knowing them better, and being more knowledgeable about our treatments and preventive medicine, especially nutrition and lifestyle.
Most health care costs are engendered in the last weeks of life because we have a Health Insurance Economy and not a Health Economy (Health Assurance) If there really was a Health Industry, then more of those costs would be expended in the early and mid-life resulting in much higher quality of life for much longer which would be a net reduction in health care costs per year.
Let's have Health Assurance, not Health Insurance.
Anyone think billionaires work less hard if their prospects are only 2 billion, not 4 billion?
Above a certain level of richness it becomes a game, score-keeping.
Raise taxes on the rich and level the playing field a bit more. Throw that phrase into the Republicans' faces.
Political persuasion is all about framing and language. The Republicans are always talking about the American Dream and the opportunities that a "level playing field" provides; usually when they want to erase affirmative action and the like.
Level the playing field: tax the rich and feed the poor.
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