Patient Power... will bring change.

Conrad and I just returned from the International College of Integrative Medicine Conference in Washington DC.  Conrad was the program chair and I was an impressed member of the audience.  The speakers were tops, the energy was over the top and one thing impressed me above all else.   Through the presentations the truth of the passion and care for patients of these doctors screamed out at you.  Each presenter, each participant brought home to me how we can change medical care in this society for good, how we could have the treatments we seek.  Talk with your doctors and tell them what you want.
Want real care – full of solutions to your problems?  Want off the prescription pad for good? Talk to your doctors and tell them what you want.  During this conference physician after physician, some with tears in their voice, describe how much their patients meant to them.  It did not matter if they were talking about a case that improved or someone who asked them to look at a treatment they did not know about, or directed them to an important book.  These caring physicians were deeply motivated in a thousand ways by the life and times of their patients.  One special physician fought an expensive battle to make sure a treatment she knew was crucial to patient health survived attack by orthodox medicine.   Even if one more person could be helped it was worth it to her … that one more patient had an incredible story of recovery and she is grateful she fought on and did not give up.

Please realize it is you… you are the change this country needs.  It will be you that brings the kind of care you seek to continue, it will be you that brings down the costs and it will be you that moves the political winds out of the way.  Please have a talk with your doctor.  If you can’t talk to your doctor you need another one, find one.  A good place to start in the ranks of the icimed.com, the International College of Integrative Medicine.  Read all about this conference on facebook and on the website.

Health Care Reform

It is very hard to watch the health care reform action in DC when you work in the field.  The marketplace already has the answers to meaningful reform and something puzzles me.  Have you noticed that the people helping to write reform legislation and advise our representatives are the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies?  They are supportive of several drafts so far according to NPR.  Does that scare you?
If insurance companies and pharma are supportive we are in for it;  you must realize they do not need the government to reform the way they conduct themselves. They could make changes tomorrow to benefit us all. The last thing they need is government to help them change.    SOOOOOOOO... must be more to this. They are making sure they have more customers mandated to use their services. You need to force people into psychiatric care and you need to force people into government programs, they do not flock to these “opportunities”. We all know “them with the bucks calls the shots”.  Recover YOUR MONEY and call your own shots.

Why are you falling for this?  Why not just demand your money back and put it in a health savings account; your pretax dollars will support your yearly health costs, you could use this money to stay healthy if these plans were designed right and you were in charge, and you could purchase a very high deductible insurance plan for serious illness and accidents.  Cheap, workable and it would cover everyone who wanted it. We still have welfare programs to cover those of us who have financial problems.

Is there anyone who looks forward to qualifying for Medicare? I do not. It is mandated so at a certain point you cannot buy your own coverage, you have to settle for the government run care – the treatments YOU want are not covered.  No prevention and no antiaging medical strategies. Remember, I do not think a test is a preventive measure, it does not stop anything from happening, it only tells you it is or it could.  Tests are not treatment.

I want to use my health care dollars for exercise, vitamins, non pharmaceutical products that would boost my immune system, chelation therapy to lower the metals that cause heart disease and sauna detoxification to rid my body of cancer causing poisons I can’t avoid.  I WANT TO HIRE MY OWN DOCTORS AND KEEP MY RECORDS PRIVATE.   I want to hire competent help to stay in my home when I am unable to fully care for myself thereby avoiding expensive, deadly nursing homes. Warehousing tires works, warehousing people does not.

Insane medicine reigns. In the hands of some insurance programs and pharmaceutical companies you get ideas like this.  A guy is addicted to street drugs, he wants help or he wants a bed and food for a week. He goes to a drug program and gets fed and a place to sleep. He does not get real help for his addiction, he gets put on psyche drugs as a replacement for street drugs because the insurance companies will pay for that but they will not pay for real help like searching physicals and repairing ill health with nutrition and finding out why the guy is having such trouble in life, not covered except by the most expensive plans. When the insurance runs out the psyches that run the place call him cured and throw him out on the street again. Criminal care. Druggies laugh as they should, free drugs, free food, free bed. They get to rest up and save a bit of money so they can hit hard in a week or two.

The current health reform proposals have vicious sweeping funding for mental health programs.  Everyone will be a psyche patient.  Mental health centers in schools will use drugs as preventive measures when you answer a question on a crabby day the wrong way.  Did you hear that some scientists are using amphetamine like drugs, ritalin types, for cognitive enhancement?  Makes them smarter until their heart gives out.  So your hard earned tax dollars will be used to fund mental health workers and therapists.  Do you see the end in that expense?  Drugs will take the place of real health care as they are cheaper than operations and preventive treatments.  All aboard the nazi like health camps.  We are in for it.  Speak up and throw your federal and state representatives out of office if they vote for these crazy changes.