In
This Issue:
Dear brothers and sisters, This month of June we are celebrating our Medjool dates.They are grown here in California by family farmers. In the World Mind we are featuring 25 Questions to Ask Anyone who is Delusional Enough to believe that this Economic Recovery is Real. There is also a paean to American medicine describing how two-year-old toddlers are being dosed with antipsychotic drugs. Some weeks ago we did an editorial dealing with the healthcare legislation. We received several carefully considered responses, some critical and others enthusiastic. We decided to create a more detailed exposition. We would appreciate hearing from you again. Jesse Schwartz,
Ph.D. Many of us feel that there was something profoundly wrong about the recent healthcare legislation. The aspect we wish to discuss here is the “individual mandate” requirement that almost every US citizen must buy health insurance by 2014. Virtually all Americans will have to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. Failure to comply will be punished with an annual tax penalty that by 2016 will raise to $750 or 2% of income, whichever is higher. Many see this as an unprecedented exercise of state power. It threatens our basic constitutional rights and individual freedom. Never before has Congress required people to buy private insurance or any private product. Congress has no authority whatsoever to sell health insurance and force individuals against their will to purchase it or extort money from them using threats or penalties. Why, we ask, should Congress stop with health insurance? Why not require all Americans to purchase houses? The American dream! Anyone who doesn’t purchase a house would be faced with penalties and fines. Imagine! Overnight there would be full employment! We would be back in the halcyon days of the housing bubble! American medical care is the most expensive in the world. The US spends more than twice as much on each person for healthcare as most other industrial countries, and yet it has fallen to last place in preventing deaths that could have been avoided by use of timely and effective medical procedures. There is a deeper problem. Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated, and bureaucratic in the world. An incredible 30% of each healthcare dollar is spent on administration, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying, and campaign contributions. It’s sole contribution toward your well being is to hire an army of claims agents to deny claims for coverage and another army of salesmen to sell you policies. It serves no productive purpose. The healthcare “reform” doesn’t compute. It is simply a pretext to pump money into private health insurance companies. Besides filling their pockets, the “reform” leaves untouched a system of healthcare that is both wrong and wasteful. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive coverage for all Americans. The Institute of Medicine (IOM), a branch of the non-partisan, federally financed National Academy of Sciences, just released a preliminary report on “excess costs” --i.e., waste--in the US health care system, and the findings aren’t pretty. The IOM concluded that $810 billion is wasted each and every year. Here’s how it breaks down:
The total cost of the “reform” over its first decade is estimated to be between $2.5 and $3 trillion. This staggering sum will be met in part by increasing taxes on the American people by over $1 trillion. Of course there is no inquiry into just what sort of healthcare is being provided. It is the same old allopathic medical model devoted to alleviating or masking symptoms. It rests upon the pillars of pharmaceuticals, vaccinations, chemical psychiatry, mammograms, and surgical interventions. As Mike Adams, a tireless advocate of health and healing says, “the legislation that was just passed is focused entirely on how to expand the failed system of drugs and injections...” What, then would a genuine program for healing America look like? Now, many agree, that the greatest advance in health came from sanitation including sewage, clean water, and decent housing. Indeed the average human life expectancy increased over 35 years over the span of the 20th century. Roughly 30 of those 35 years are attributable to improvements in sanitation and living conditions that have dramatically reduced the toll of infectious diseases, malnutrition, and exposure to the elements. It seems to us today, that clean water, clean air and vital food would have much the same effect as sanitation did previously. We would like then to make the following modest proposals:-- All drinking water to be brought up to the highest level of purity. Every effort be made to reduce air pollution. This will comprise many small changes over years. Every American has the right to engage in creative and productive work and to be compensated in a sustainable way. I note that the unemployment rate here in California is something like 12%. This understates things. The so-called underemployment rate--which counts people who have given up looking for work and those who are working part-time for lack of full-time positions--now sits at 17.3%. In other words, over 26 million Americans are not able to earn a reasonable living. This, after spending $787 billion, supposedly, to stimulate the economy! We cannot but ask ourselves, if the time has yet arrived, if we have reached that point in civilization, when we can, by way of right, direct our life energy in creative, productive and soul satisfying work. Think of it! Twenty six million Americans are sitting at home subsisting most likely on junk food, becoming overweight and even obese. If they were engaged in the rebirthing of this nation, in one year they could contribute 50 billion hours of labor. Imagine the effect if that colossal energy were used to further wellness, conviviality and aliveness! The right to restore and heal. The right to creative and rewarding work. This is your entitlement, America! All foods by the year 2014 shall be organic.
If the people of this great land focused on this goal, it
can happen! It is The Declaration of Independence states that
“all men are endowed with Every American is entitled to it by right. Here
is your historic opportunity! New This Month
On Sale This Month From Living Tree Community!
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