Originally published October 5 2009
Will real health reform ever happen in America?
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) When it comes to affordable, effective health care reform in America, there's only one question that really needs to be asked right now: What works?
In other words, what works to keep people healthy? What's affordable, safe and supports the long-term health of the population? What's available right now that can help people get healthy and remain healthy?
Those answers aren't difficult. They're found, in fact, in the fresh produce section of every grocery store in America, and even more answers are found in the dietary supplement sections of health food stores. In America today, we don't have a lack of good answers to the current health care crisis; what we have is too many people asking the wrong questions!
Instead of asking, "What works?" we have health care reform lobbyists and pharmaceutical pushers putting their efforts into a completely different question: "What's profitable?"
The entire health care reform conversation taking place today is based around that question: What's profitable? How can we make the most money by requiring the most people to participate in our profit-making system? That's the real reason behind mandatory health insurance requirements, by the way.
But what if we threw out everything we think we know about health care right now and started from scratch? Toss out the current complex system of failed treatments, failed insurance plans and the monopolistic practices that dominate western today. What if we started with a blank slate?
If we started over, wouldn't the first and most important question simply be "What works?"
A universe of possibilities to consider
Answering that question necessarily involves considering all the possibilities of what works. We've got to look at what works in the known universe, not just what works in one system of medicine. Proponents of western medicine, as you well know, want to limit the entire discussion of health care reform to their own narrowly-defined systems of chemical intervention, ineffective disease screening, medically unjustified surgeries and deadly chemotherapy treatments. But that's not an honest answer to the "what works" question... it's only a predetermined, narrow interpretation of the question that ultimately lends little value toward finding real health care solutions.
In answering the "what works?" question, we've got to consider healing foods, nutritional supplements, exercise, stress reduction, vibrational medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, spiritual medicine, healing through intention, body work, chiropractic care, mind-body medicine, the healing arts and much more. Not surprisingly, once you open up the possibility of answers to include the entire universe of possibilities, you quickly begin to discover safe, affordable and highly effective healing modalities that can help people prevent and eliminate disease while enhancing lifelong health and happiness.
For example, simple dietary changes alone can eliminate 70% of cancers all by themselves. Combined with superfood nutrition (which is ridiculously affordable compared to urgent medical care), sunshine, exercise and stress reduction, we can prevent 90% of all cancers using what we know right now -- without a single visit to a hospital or a clinic. (And without a single additional dollar being spent to "find a cure.")
The censorship of healing foods
Grocery stores are loaded with anti-cancer foods like broccoli, cabbage, celery, citrus fruits, grapes, bean sprouts and blueberries. And yet none of these anti-cancer foods can be described as anti-cancer foods by the companies selling them, according to U.S. federal law (FDA regulations). Sadly, our own federal government has outlawed companies from telling the truth about what works to keep people healthy. Any company daring to say that "broccoli contains anti-cancer medicine," for example, would be immediately subject to arrest, inventory confiscation and prison time for its executives.
The fact that people in Washington D.C. are even discussing health care reform without first attempting to end the censorship of true statements about what works is astonishing. How can a nation hope to achieve affordable, lasting health if it is illegal for sellers of fresh fruits and vegetables to accurately describe the remarkable health benefits of those products?
Logically, the very first step to serious health reform in America must involve ending the censorship of truthful health claims for foods, dietary supplements, herbal remedies and other natural medicines. Because when it comes to "what works" that's affordable, safe and readily available right now, you can't do better than foods, superfoods, supplements and herbs. What you eat has more impact on your health than anything else. Thus, any serious effort at health care reform must include serious discussions about improving what Americans eat.
Because, let's face it, the American diet is atrocious. It's so universally awful that people don't even recognize it as awful anymore. Consuming junk food, processed food and soda pop is just accepted as routine instead of being seen as an extremely self-destructive habit leading to disease. Clearly, if you're asking the question "What works?" you quickly come to the realization that the Standard American Diet doesn't work. It creates a population stricken by cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health disorders and worse.
Why do we let processed food companies advertise at all?
That Standard American Diet is a creature of corporate advertising, of course. And it should be rather obvious that allowing junk food companies and soda companies to advertise their health-destroying products on television does not promote a healthy nation. It generates profits for those food and beverage companies at the expense of the health of the entire nation. But the nation ends up paying for those health care costs one way or another, so it all becomes a huge net loss for the nation as a whole.
Corporate advertising of processed foods falls into the category of "What doesn't work." There are lots of other things in that category: Mammograms (which actually cause cancer), PSA prostate cancer screening (medically useless), chemotherapy (harms more people than it helps), psychiatric drugs, cholesterol drugs, artificial lighting, water fluoridation, etc.
In fact, if you made two lists right now, with one list called "What Works" and the other list called "What Doesn't Work," you'd be amazing to find a fascinating pattern emerging.
What pattern?
That nearly all the things that WORK to protect and enhance health are censored while nearly all the things that DON'T work are allowed to engage in unlimited "free speech" advertising and propaganda campaigns.
For example, a company selling red cabbage would be shut down if it claimed that cabbage contains anti-cancer medicine (which it does), but a company claiming that mammograms "prevent" cancer (which is a lie, because they actually cause cancer) is allowed to openly make that claim as loudly and as widely as they wish.
In other words, in the United States today, there are almost no restrictions on free speech for companies selling products that promote disease, but there are heavy restrictions on free speech for companies selling products that prevent disease. Is it any wonder our people are so diseased and medically misinformed?
If this bizarre situation is allowed to continue, it can only result in yet more chronic disease for the American people. Real health care reform is obviously impossible as long as such a situation continues. And yet, amazingly, ending the censorship of truthful claims for dietary supplements isn't even part of the current health care reform debate! Only a handful of legislators in Washington are even aware that this is a problem.
Rep. Ron Paul, notably, has championed numerous health freedom protection bills that would restore free speech status to sellers of medicinal foods, superfoods and supplements, but none of these bills has even made it to a floor vote.
(That's because the U.S. Congress is nutritionally ignorant. In fact, the health status of the Congress itself is a sadly accurate reflection of the disastrous health status of the entire nation: It's rife with obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and serious mental disorders...)
Why America needs a temporary health dictator
To really reform health care in America, you'd actually need a temporary health dictator -- someone who answers to no lobbyists, no corporate string-pullers and no financial influence. Only a true (temporary) health care dictator could make the necessary, courageous decisions that need to be made today: Dismantling the FDA and prosecuting those responsible for the current pharmaceutical racket, ending patent protection for all pharmaceuticals, banning the advertising of all drugs, junk foods and harmful beverages, reforming medical malpractice laws, shutting down the false Big Pharma non-profit groups that profit from cancer while actually causing the disease they claim to be fighting, etc.
But we don't appoint dictators in America, right?
Wrong! The corporations are serving as dictators right now, controlling the media, influencing medical schools, altering legislative policy and running the health insurance scam that's right now leaving Americans diseased and bankrupt. They are, effectively, corporate dictators who control America right now, from the halls of Washington to the shops of Main Street.
To counter those corporate dictators, what we need now is a temporary health dictator who represents the People instead of the corporations. This person, of course, would be alive for about two minutes after being appointed, because every corporation currently profiting from disease in America would hire a hit man to get rid of the guy and protect the status quo, so you probably won't see anybody volunteering for this job.
Besides a temporary health care dictator (which is really just a bit of satire, as I don't actually support the idea of dictators), the next best idea is a popular health care revolt. People marching in the streets, setting fire to packets of aspartame, marching with signs that read, "Mammograms cause cancer" and demanding the arrest and prosecution of the FDA executives and Big Pharma CEOs who are running today's current medical racket.
With a popular revolt, we could turn this system around and take back our health freedoms. That's why I encourage you to support Rep. Ron Paul's Health Freedom Protection Act and call, fax or email your representatives in Washington on a regular basis to let them know you support a ban on pharmaceutical advertising and the enactment of new laws that protect your health freedoms.
If we fail to do that, we will find our nation stuck in a destructive "sick care" spiral that will ultimately end in the bankruptcy of America.
I described this possibility four years ago in a story I wrote called "The Town of Allopathy" you can read right here: http://www.naturalnews.com/008674.html
(And yes, I am the original author of this popular story. There has been some confusion over this fact, but I wrote it in 2005 and it has since appeared on many other popular websites, causing some people to be confused over who originally wrote the story.)
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