UNIVERSAL

HEALTH CARE
IN AMERICA

Achieving Affordable
Health Care With
Medical Mitigation Fees
 by Stephen Simac
Summary: More than two trillion dollars is sp
ent by Americans on medical care each year, yet our health
is worse than citizens of most other industrialized nations.
Medicare for All would lower overall costs, without
significantly improving our health. Universal Health Care
that reimburses for Preventive, Complementary and
Alternative approaches will improve health and seriously
reduce costs. Education and Encouragement while Enabling
citizens to practice wellness will reduce costs and human
misery far more than medical intervention, even further
reducing costs. Greatest savings will be from systemic
societal shifts in lifestyle. and in medical treatment for
chronic illness and end of life care. Building coalitions of
support for Universal Health Care is essential to achieving it.
Funding such health care by charging MMF on products and
practices that cause illness and injury will do more to
improve health than taxing employment. Toxin and Hazard
MMF will reduce our exposure to them through economic
pressures, while raising suffiicient revenue to pay for
Universal Health Care.

CONTENTS:
1. BLOOD AND TREASURE: Crippling burdens of our medical
system
2. UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE: Freedom that reduces costs and
improves care
3. NUDE BEACH WELLNESS: Consideration of one nutrient in
improving health/lowering costs
4. REMOVING THE BLINDERS: Sources of ignorance with egress from
the maze of disinformation
5. TOXINS AND HAZARDS PAY: Examining funding through MMF
6. THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW: Futility of prohibition in promoting
the General Welfare
7. HEALING POWER OF PRAYER: Grave Dangers of conventional
medical care
 BLOOD AND TREASURE

The Health Care system, as it’s euphemistically called, costs

Americans $2.3 trillion last year. Doubling in the last ten years.
That’s not even counting lost economic value from the myriad
epidemics we suffer from. Americans aren’t getting great value,
since most other industrial nations spend less than half as much per
capita, while their citizens enjoy better health by most measures.
Despite this record, most health care reformers focus on symptom
tinkering, instead of systemic change.
Single Payer Health Care is promoted by progressives as if
government funding of medical costs would somehow solve the
health problems plaguing Americans. It’s hard to fathom this
confidence when the Institute of Medicine’s own conservative
numbers blamed medical treatment for causing more deaths in the
US than anything except heart disease and cancer. They estimated
over 100,000 iatrogenic deaths per year in the mid 1990’s. No
health improvements could even be shown to result from $700
billion of medical costs, according to the Congressional Budget
Office in a more recent study.
Larry Summers, a member of President Obama’s fiscal team
wrote that health care “is now the principal fiscal issue facing the
federal government.” A 2008 study by The Kaiser Family
Foundation found that 49% of foreclosures in California were
caused by medical problems in the previous year. The American
Journal of Medicine found that 60% of bankruptcies in the US
were caused by medical expenses, whether insured or not. It’s
obvious that the economic meltdown wasn’t caused simply by
subprime mortgages.
Health care costs Americans more than housing or food and is a
bigger expense for businesses than materials. To be sure,
significant costs could be saved by reducing the 30%
administrative overhead of private insurance companies, compared
to the 3% of Medicare/Medicaid, This government run program is
already the largest insurance company in the country.
For profit and evem “not for profit” insurance corporations
annually post 25% profit margins. The medical insurance industry
will pocket a quarter trillion dollars this year, while millions of
sick and injured Americans go belly up with debt. Enough profits
to torpedo congressional efforts to offer a public option.
When politicians talk about reducing medical costs, they’re only
hoping to reduce the stratospheric rate of increase. They’ve got a
few pet ideas they barely understand. Electronic billing might
shave off a few per cent, or not, but will definitely further erode
patient privacy. Any savings won’t make Americans healthier or
even contain cost increases to the rate of inflation.
To be blunt, the abysmal health of our nation is directly
attributable to the American Way of Life, (AWOL). Improving
our health will require more than treating the symptoms, but doing
so would actually fill the holes we’ve been pouring money into.
Conventional medicine enjoys a lucrative near monopoly on
“health” care in the untied states without producing acceptable
results by any outcome standards. Most proposed “fixes” revolve
around how to pay doctors and hospitals for treating epidemics of
heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, asthma, autoimmune
diseases, stress, depression, motor vehicle and gun trauma, falling
accidents, alcoholism, substance abuse, anxiety, chronic pain,
neurological malfunctions, viral and bacterial infections along with
a host of other health problems. And then we die, when a natural
event is milked for maximum expense.
Americans’ poor health is not primarily the fault of allopathic
medicine, but the system is overwhelmed treating the symptoms of
a sick and toxic society. Because of the enormous expense of
conventional medical treatment there are politically powerful and
vastly wealthy interests opposed to systemic changes reducing
their profits, regardless of the general welfare. Medical care
employs more than 14 million Americans, four times the
automobile industry.
An array of hospital, physician and medical profession
associations, private insurance companies, pharmaceutical and
medical supply corporations, mainstream media and
advertising/PR conglomerates, government regulators and
legislators, along with academic, scientific, business, and many
consumer groups stand in the way of systemic health care reform.
Any hope of success for actually improving Americans’ health will
have to weave through their intertwined interests.
All “reform” passed by politicians will be shaped by the demands
of these “stakeholders”. They’re brought in to craft something they
can live with, like the 90’s Clinton effort, the Massachusetts
experiment, California Governor Schwarzenegger’s stillborn
attempt and the Obama Democrats’ emerging rough beast..
The federal “reform” plan will deliver 30-50 million mandatory
new customers with federal subsidies attached to the insurance
conglomerates, pharmaceutical behemoths, medical treatment
armies with equipment and support trains chugging behind ready
to punch their tickets as they board. Their ‘reform” plan will still
blow 25 times more money on disease treatment than real
prevention.
Progressives were warned this was coming. Dr. Jeanne
Lambrew, one of Obama’s health care advisors, never mentioned
single payer in her Oct. 29, 2008 testimony before the House Ways
and Means committee. She referenced “ a wide range of visions
and detailed plans …developed to fix the broken health care
system.” but claimed “no viable alternative exists” other than
employer sponsored health insurance. Apparently she meant within
our national boundaries.
A dose of reality is the best medicine. The debate was not about
“health care”, only about paying for the crippling costs of medical
treatment for Americans. An aging population getting fatter and
sicker ever younger. Caused by the American Way of Life
(AWOL).
Seventy Five % of medical costs are from epidemics of chronic,
preventable diseases. Most of the rest is spent in their last months
of misery. Paying for pills, cutting off diabetic limbs and triple
bypasses for octogenarians can’t touch that. Without fixing the
cause, trillions thrown at repairing the results won’t help.
Since actually improving Americans’ health has less priority than
continued profits, all such plans quickly founder on the runaway
costs of medical treatment. In fact, any reform acceptable to those
who profit from illness and injury will become too expensive to
afford, if those who profit also determine treatment options and
prices. An economic axiom is that monopolies increase costs while
stifling innovation or competition.
Even low overhead, government run Medicare and Medicaid
costs are bleeding government, business and household budgets
dry. while medical providers cry for higher reimbursements. The
National Association of State Budget Officers projects that state
costs for Medicaid will increase by 4% in 2010, four times the
average state funds growth.

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Successful reform that actually improves our collective health,

instead of merely shelling out for the spiraling medical costs of a
morbid population, will need to build coalitions of practitioners
and supporters. Our strategy must exploit divisions among the
opposition’s ranks to undermine their influence and sap entrenched
positions. Ultimately more citizens must demand and work to help
Americans become healthier. Revitalizing activists, educating
unaware citizens through outreach, and gaining disaffected
members from the opposition is essential to success. Creative
tactics and a long term strategy will be required to win the war on
our health.
Physician associations are not as monolithic as they were.
Conventional medicine has been frayed around the edges by
doctors’ dissatisfaction with patient loads and their preponderance
of chronic illnesses, HMO oversight, reduced payments and
increased overhead has fractured their ranks.
Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of Preventive Medicine Research
Institute in Sausalito has proved that diet and lifestyle changes
reversed heart disease in 2,000 patients in a year and could cut
sickcare costs in half.
Dr. Michael Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic, estimates that 80% of
medical costs could be reduced with evidence based health habits.
Dr. Andrew Weil, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine
at the University of Arizona, believes we need a new culture of
health and a complete transformation of medicine in this country to
avoid being inundated by a silver tsunami of unhealthy boomers.
Dr. Len Saputo has published a plan for “radical health care
reform based on the integral health medicine model.” This would
mix other licensed health providers into the current medical
monopoly.
Just like Single Payer advocates, these doctors were kept off the
“reform” table.
Volumes of scientific evidence is available to any researcher
willing to do a literature search to prove many lifestyle and
environmental illnesses can be treated at least as effectively, at far
less cost than “scientific medicine”. Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (CAM) evidence exists in a parallel universe
than conventional medical treatment paradigms, but growing
numbers of Americans have tapped into that awareness.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2007 survey
found 38% of Americans used alternatives to conventional medical
treatment,. Almost half of this was herbal remedies, mainly
echinacea for colds. If using vitamins, minerals, folk remedies or
praying were included in the CDC’s definition of alternative
medicine, nearly every American did more than take two aspirins
and call the doctor in the morning.
The majority of physicians are aware that prevention through
minor lifestyle changes is far more economical than treatment.
Most went into medicine because they wanted to improve people’s
health (especially after financial services and legal careers lured
those who went to medical school to make the big bucks). but now
are stuck, due to their extensive training and income requirements.
Whether they want to or not, their job is mainly doling out
symptomatic crisis relief in the current system. There’s an
enormous need for this kind of care due to AWOL, but
conventional medical care makes highly educated and well paid
professionals perform heroic rescues and scribble scrips, while the
masses are performing a high wire act with no nets. Doctors call
up Be Careful, Put out that Cigarette, You're Too Heavy, Let’s
Beef Up the Wire! Meanwhile a legion of carnie barkers are
enticing Americans to climb up where the action is.
M.D.’s are splitting over how to pay for their treatment. Tens of
thousands of doctors nationwide have signed on to The Physicians
for a National Health Program proposal. Their plan calls for
federally funded medical insurance for all Americans. In 2003,
they estimated their proposal would cost about $1.8 trillion a year,
roughly three times the federal military budget then. They want it
to be paid for with a payroll tax of 7% for employers, 2% for
employees and a repeal of Bush's tax cuts to cover all "medically
necessary services" such as doctor's visits, hospital costs, substance
abuse treatments, pharmaceutical prescriptions and medical
supplies.
Even these M.Dissenters still limit reimbursement within their
exclusive domain. Reimbursement for other licensed practitioners
of health care is not in the plan, although this would reduce patient
loads for overwhelmed general practitioners and lower overall
costs. There is a severe shortage of primary care physicians on the
horizon, but losing potential clients generates more opposition than
enthusiasm from them.
Patients who choose most CAM treatments or preventive practices
pay out of their own pocket, since medical insurance rarely
reimburses for such treatments. Then usually only for chiropractic
and acupuncture. Any type of treatment is more effective for
patients who believe in its efficacy, but the placebo effect isn’t
powerful enough to account for 80% of patients rating their CAM
treatment as helpful.
Universal Health Care (UHC) would subsidize (with affordable
co-pays based on income) treatment by licensed or certified
practitioners of Acupuncture, Addiction Recovery, Chiropractic,
Dentistry, Exercise, Health Education, Homeopathy, Massage
Therapy, Naturopathy, Nutrition, Physical Therapy, Psychology,
Safety Engineers and other bonded treatment and prevention
modalities. Regulatory oversight by their associations, public
rating systems, and an independent investigative agency would
control fraud and misuse.
This expansion of treatment reimbursement would build broad
coalitions of support for Universal Health Care, It will also
generate fierce opposition. CAM practitioners must build greater
support for UHC by offering more Americans the opportunity to
experience their treatments. CAM practitioners could combine to
promote publicized Free Care Days. This would create awareness,
attract Americans to other varieties of healthcare and build
practices, while adding to the ranks of systemic health care reform
supporters.
Reimbursement for more types of treatment will reduce the
expense of treating many maladies, because most CAM options
cost far less than conventional care. Eighty per cent of medical
costs are spent on 20% of the population, mostly those with
chronic illness or near death. Changing how we treat these patients
could realize huge savings for any health care plan.
Dying with Dignity sounds better than Death Panels or Killing
Granny. Improvements in end of life care would reduce costs
dramatically as well as needless pain and suffering. Managing
patients with chronic illness with a team of therapists can cost less
than crisis response, but is still expensive compared to prevention.
The health care model will soon dissolve under financial and
geriatric pressure unless systemic social reform promotes health
and wellness.

NUDE BEACH WELLNESS

Consider vitamin D, actually a pro-hormone that switches on over

one thousand genes in our bodies. The American College of
Nutrition advises 5,000 international units of D a day for adults,
while the Food and Drug Administration only recommends 600 iu
for adults, 200 for children. The American Academy of Pediatrics
doubles that to 400 iu for children. The Institute of Medicine may
get around to updating its recommended amounts of D next year.
Meanwhile, the average blood levels of D for Americans is less
than half the 70 ng/ml considered adequate by Kaiser Permanente
and dropping. Those most at risk are children, the elderly, people
with darker skins, the overweight or those living north of the 30th
parallel. School lunches only provide 100-200 iu a day, if kids eat
everything.
Deficiencies have been linked with increased breast, bowel and
other cancers, depression and other mental disorders, osteoporosis
and broken bones from falling, rickets, high blood pressure, heart
disease, multiple sclerosis, acne, asthma, lung infections and
catching the flu.
For pennies a day per person through supplements or by
sunbathing 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes from spring to fall
Americans could massively reduce medical costs, misery, pain and
death. You’d think doctors would be all for prevention, but
apparently they’re not convinced. For instance, a study published
in the British Medical Journal found that those with the highest
levels of D were 40% less likely to develop colon cancer than
those with the lowest. But Dr. Panagiota Mitrou, science manager
for the World Cancer Research Fund, claimed “”the findings need
to be treated with caution and they are certainly not enough
evidence to suggest that we should be taking supplements to
increase levels of vitamin D. “ (He lives in England, where half the
population is D deficient, sunbathing opportunities are iffy even in
the summer and milk isn’t fortified with D). In the same article
about the results in The Telegraph, Dr. Mazda Jenab, the lead
author of the study from the International Agency for Research on
Cancer, doubled up on official advice, “This has to be balanced
with caution regarding the potential toxic effects of too much
vitamin D and the fact that very little is known about the
association of vitamin D with either increased or reduced risk of
other cancers.” Yet, the low toxicity of D at less than 10,000 iu a
day is well established.
The National Cancer Institute is only now getting around to
studying whether D and Omega 3 fish oil reduce cancer rates, heart
disease and strokes. An AP article about a planned NCI funded
study to see whether vitamin D supplements can reduce cancer,
heart disease and stroke rates, (based on extensive research that
people with low levels suffer higher incidence), quotes Dr. JoAnn
Manson, co-leader of the study. “We should be cautious about
jumping on the bandwagon to take megadoses of these
supplements. “ Why not cautions about physician prescribed drugs
killing thousands of Americans a year? Preventing cancers isn’t as
profitable as future treatments or studying it to death, but people
would rather not be patients just to contribute to the economy.
Adequate levels of D not only prevents influenza, but can
greatly reduce the symptoms and length of illness. Governments
that spent billions on stockpiling Swine Flu vaccines (and now are
trying to unload them on third world countries), could have
prevented more illness and deaths with much less harm by
mandating fortification of common foods with D or subsidizing
full spectrum tanning beds instead.

REMOVING THE BLINDERS

Americans want to Feel Better, Lose Weight (usually), and Save

Money (definitely), Promising these results from UHC is no
exaggeration, and sounds sexier than Single Payer Now or Public
Option or Bust.
Transforming social and environmental conditions to actively
prevent many illnesses and injuries will save bundles and reduce
overall misery. Awareness is growing among networks of groups
and individuals working for change in these areas that they are also
health care reformers. Hooking up with networking tools and
demanding real change is critical for reformers to accomplish
UHC.
Most information about health care treatment flows from a
mainstream media as enthralled by modern medicine as they are
heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical and medical treatment
advertising. Less than 4% of news content last year was on health
or health care issues according to a 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation
study. Most coverage of health issues was about specific diseases,
mainly cancer. Health care reform received only 1% of their
attention then. even though it consistently rated as the public’s
number one concern during that campaign season, which the media
relentlessly covered. This percentage undoubtedly increased last
year, although the media did little to increase public understanding.
Lack of relevance is one cause of the demise of mainstream
media.
 Health care reformers are natural allies with progressive political
lobbyists. Splitting up media monopolies, expanding public service
access to our airwaves, restricting ownership of public airwaves to
media only companies, reforming the FDA, decoupling corporate
funding from academic medical research and restricting
advertisement of prescribed medicines to prescribers only, are
needed remedies. Progressive legislation may soften up corporate
media bias, but a blitzkrieg around their Maginot Line of
propaganda with viral marketing memes about real health care to
reach consumers and health care providers can break through
quicker.
The growing enthusiasm for holistic medicine by many M.D.s is
fragmenting treatment consensus. Nevertheless, most physicians
will fiercely resist reimbursement for alternative treatment options.
“The reality is none of these things work. They’re placebos.”, Dr.
Wallace Sampson, former professor of medicine at Stanford
University and founding editor of Scientific Review of Alternative
Medicine was quoted in a Dec. 11, 2008 AP article about the
growing popularity of alternative medicine. The scientific method
usually requires at least a literature search, before forming a
definitve oonclusion.
The old guard will die off, however the new guard will likely fight
a delaying action. Richard Nahin of the National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine “cited the lack of
rigorous scientific testing in declining to call such use harmful or
beneficial.” in the same article. This is the agency that has received
billions for over a decade to provide such testing.
The pharmaceutical industry is on the ropes now with scandal
after public health catastrophe dogging them, but their enormous
wealth and PR machines can still crush any frontal assault against
them. Salivating over tens of millions of new customers for their
products, they even gave up $80 billion dollars in future profits and
agreed to stay on the sidelines in the public debate over
ObamaCare.
Retaining exclusive prescriptive powers for current prescribers of
restricted pharmaceuticals might blunt their opposition to
expanding reimbursement for CAM treatment. Or not.

TOXINS AND HAZARDS PAY THEIR WAY

Business groups are mainly opposed to single payer insurance,

public options and even ObamaCare because funding proposals
invariably tax employment. They typically mandate businesses to
provide medical insurance for employees or make payments to a
government fund. Since the price of insurance rises much faster
than inflation, more businesses will choose to pay a fee, which
won’t cover government subsidies for lower income consumers to
purchase inflated insurance.
Mandating that all citizens buy a flawed and expensive product
they may not need and that can still leave them owing ruinous
medical co-pays, simply to spread the risk for insurance companies
is hardly reform, The medical insurance industry claims it now
supports mandatory coverage for all Americans, after torpedoing
Clinton’s reform with Harry and Louise. That’s understandable
considering 50 million new customers.
Having a job improves health, so taxing employment will have
unintended consequences. Tax what you want less of is another
economic axiom. Economists aren’t wrong about everything.
There are funding options other than taxing employment. Paying
for UHC by charging medical MMF (MMF) on substances or
practices known to cause illness and injury to directly pay for their
health care costs would split business opposition to health care
reform
Payroll taxes for Medicare/Medicaid already take a ragged bite
out of worker and business take home. Reducing or eliminating
payroll taxes for Medicare/Medicaid with MMF will be wildly
popular with employees and employers.
Medical insurance rates have doubled or tripled rates of inflation,
while wages have been stagnant or dropping since the 80’s.
Business profits have primarily come from cutting their workforce.
The current economic catastrophe will soon reveal why our
employment based coverage is almost an anomaly in the
industrialized world. Medicaid expansion to the jobless is
predicted to rise by a million clients per 1% increase in
unemployment, and both those costs will rapidly break most state
budgets.
The rapidly growing Green Business sector would become more
competitive with hazardous industries that have profited from
externalizing their harm. These fees will add allies to the coalition
while dividing business interests.
A recent UCLA study found that health complications from
obesity costs California $41 billion a year. Since it’s one of the
thinner states, the rest of the country pays even more per capita.
Sweetened beverages, greasy. starchy foods, psychotropic
medications, hormone mimicking chemicals and sedentary
lifestyles cause obesity, the new normal for Americans.
We love to blame the victim, especially fat ones who smoke, but
humans crave sweet, greasy, salty foodstuffs. That once ensured
meeting nutritional needs, now it promotes early onset diabetes,
heart attacks, cancers and strokes, along with numerous other
AWOL caused epidemics. These foodstuffs are addictive, just like
drugs, even more so when we’re under stress.
Former FDA commissioner David Kessler revealed that industrial
food product companies have been exploiting our innate biological
signals by intentionally “loading and layering” sugar, fat and salt.
They design in color, scent and mouth appeal, then advertise their
“bliss bombs” to hook consumers into overeating any time/ any
where.
 These products are physiologically as addictive and harmful as
any of the illegal drugs we’ve spent trillions to unsuccessfully
eradicate through Prohibition, Charging such fees to pay for
medical costs would be more effective than banning substances
and practices, because it will raise public funds instead of spending
them. Entrenched interests have been stolidly blocking any
increased taxes on their toxic products, so attempts to gore these
oxen will face a united front opposing fees. Creative educational
campaigns will penetrate their propaganda blitz and the general
opposition of the public to paying more for products they desire,
no matter how toxic or hazardous.
There have been some recent state efforts to tax sugar filled soft
drinks to combat obesity. Before his implosion, New York
Governor David Patterson was proposing an 18% “obesity tax” on
sugared soft drinks to raise money for new health programs. It was
easily shouted down by soda drinkers/manufacturers. If the
proposed fees were to pay for the current medical costs of almost a
third of their citizens being clinically obese now, reducing NY’s
budget deficit could have improved its chances. Voters repealed
a similar tax in Maine six months after their state government
passed it in the spring of ’08. Sin taxes are a hard sell unless only a
minority enjoys them. MMF will reduce soaring deficits, which
might have more traction.
The Marin Institute calculated the economic cost to California
from alcohol is $38 billion a year. The legislature recently voted
down a proposed nickel a drink tax. Refusing to charge the vast
majority of drinkers a dime a day more to help pay for the medical
costs of uncontrolled alcoholics is that much more profit for the
brewers, bottlers and merchants. Not that it would have gone
directly to pay for these costs, any more than tobacco taxes do.
Cigarette taxes have been raised with impunity by most states, but
these monies go into general funds. They’re not linked to the
medical costs of tobacco, otherwise they’d be much higher.
Alcohol taxes pay for only a fraction of their social and medical
costs, but not directly. Even with the dire straits of state budgets,
there’s no groundswell to raise alcohol or other sin taxes.
Burning fossil fuels costs the US at least $120 billion a year in
medical costs and premature deaths, the National Academy of
Sciences found. Burning coal for electricity in older, dirtier power
plants is the biggest source of this externalized cost. Motor vehicle
exhaust, primarily from petroleum based fuels costs society almost
$60 billion. That doesn’t even include traffic accidents, the major
killer and disabler of Americans under forty.
MMF on coal, gasoline, diesel and bunker oil to fund UHC will
reduce imports of terrorists oil and slow global warming more than
any cap and trade scheme. Coal would be prohibitive if charged for
the health care costs of its spewed mercury, radiation, heavy
metals, and carbon soot. Nuclear already is prohibitive without
massive subsidies. Add in the costs of increased cancers, heart
disease, and pregnancy miscarriages downwind and investors will
be flocking towards photovoltaic and windmills. Unless evidence
shows these also cause illness.
There no shortage of products and practices with solid evidence
for charging MMF. Most are fundamentals of AWOL, so ending
public subsidies for their externalized costs will be ferociously
opposed. Yet politicians are desperate for new sources of income
that aren’t taxes. MMF only require a simple majority of
politicians in California. Paying for medical costs directly with
MMF will free up many billions in the budget. They’ll be needed
to pay for future pension costs, which will increasingly drain state
and federal budgets as aging workers retire with contractually
inflated benefits. At least their medical costs will be covered.
AWOL advocates will very likely die off sooner than abstainers.
Reformers will need to band together and link up across
differences to penetrate implacable opposition dependent on the
current systems for their gargantuan profits. Appealing to the
working classes by eliminating taxes and fees on wages with toxin,
hazard and non-productive income fees, eliminating avaricious
financial “service” corporations and co-opted or ineffective
government regulatory agencies will have mass appeal.

THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW

It’s usually futile to try to ban toxic substances and practices.

Consider Tobacco, Diesel Exhaust, Radiation or Aspartame. It
took a decade to ban DDT after Rachel Carson wrote her bestseller
Silent Spring in 1962, then manufacturers just shipped it off to the
third world. It’s still in American mothers’ milk. There’s little
economic incentive for government to ban health hazards, but
charging MMF to pay for their medical costs provides plenty.
There are 100,000 synthetic chemicals already in play with 2,000
new ones added each year, while only a few dozen have been
banned. Only a tiny percentage are even regulated. The California
EPA is implementing a Green Chemistry Initiative, to guide
manufacturing processes and design away from using toxic
chemicals and reducing hazardous waste.
Even though the CAL/EPA has followed the polluter pays
principle by increasing waste discharge fees to permit and monitor
toxic discharges onto land or water, they aren’t proposing to
charge MMF to pay for human health costs. This would accelerate
green chemistry practice more than a voluntary initiative.
A select few victims of some toxins and hazards have been
compensated through the court system. Legal fees have flowed to
their lawyers and the legal firms representing the polluters.
Improvement to community health is rarely the result of judicial
action. MMF that raise monies to pay for the ongoing costs of
unhealthy products and practices, could galvanize more voters than
“lucky” victims and their lawyers hitting the jury jackpot,
especially if we were offered UHC as a prize.
 Increased expenses for toxins and hazards will reduce their use
and public exposure. Government needs to find new ways to raise
money and there’s no shortage of hazards, especially if fees are
based on the Precautionary Principle, when enough evidence
indicates a likelihood of harm. It’s like a civil court judgment
instead of a criminal one.
Determining and collecting MMF will provide stable
employment for and political support from allied armies of
epidemiologists, statisticians, accountants, lawyers, biologists,
chemists and engineers, although their salaries would cost much
less than the savings in medical costs. MMF could keep
Medicare/Medicaid solvent even through the silver tsunami
predicted to swamp them as baby boomers age.
California could charge MMF for substances already listed under
Prop. 65, which have been shown to cause cancer or birth defects,
instead of merely requiring a label that few bother to read. Fees
could be based on the established LD50 rating (half their lethal
dose) of substances.
Taxing injury, disease and mortality inducing products and
practices such as heavy metals, radioactive particles, transfats,
refined grains and sweeteners, salt, inflammatory agents, loud
decibels, persistent chemicals, hormonal mimics, high speed
vehicles, wheeled toys, etc… would help pay for UHC for all
Americans.
Our exposure to these products and practices would be reduced
by increasing their price, further lowering health costs.. Charging
fees based on resulting health care costs would add pressure from
industries paying MMF to include less expensive CAM treatment
options. Allowing toxic/hazardous industries to fund independent
research on the effectiveness of more affordable CAM treatments
will break the medical monopoly into a million little pieces.
Real prevention (not most so called “preventive care” that passes
for public health measures now) costs far less than a dime for
every dollar spent on treatment. Promoting the general welfare by
enabling people to walk regularly, eat more organic or locally
grown vegetables and fruits, strengthen social ties and reduce
financial stressors along with other wellness enhancers will
significantly reduce medical costs.

HEALING POWER OF PRAYER

Congress isn’t debating or addressing the causes of spiraling

medical costs. Their resistance to challenging AWOL is
symbolized by their scheming to harness younger Americans with
the unbearable burden of paying for conventional medical care for
sick, aging Americans. The Democrat’s Health Care “reform” bill
makes medical insurance mandatory. Rates for young people are
predicted to rise by 10-30% to subsidize older Americans,
according to an analysis by Rand Health. This is sheer fantasy
when future earnings, much less the health of ballooning younger
Americans is considered.
Twelve steppers would say the way out of this mess starts with
admitting that we’ve got a problem and may even need some
higher power for outside assistance. We have enshrined AWOL, a
stressful, sickening, unsustainable system as a false god. Because it
glitters at the top of the pyramid, the base lusts to be gilded with
their stardust, instead they feast on toxic waste, accumulating debts
that can never be paid.
We can save hundreds of billions on medical care by improving
Americans health. It can be done without saddling our descendents
with crushing debts and obligations. Charging MMF for products
and practices known to cause medical problems will pay for their
externalized costs to society, instead of inflating profits of death,
disease and injury merchants.
Although Harvard Medical School estimated that 45,000
Americans died in 2005 due to lack of medical insurance, medical
treatment is the third leading cause of death according to the
Institute of Medicine. They estimated that over a hundred thousand
Americans a year died from medical mistakes in the 90’s. Few of
their recommendations to reduce medical havoc have been
adopted. A Hearst Company study concluded that 200,000 die a
year died from iatrogenic causes in 2009.
Death rates for all causes increase in direct proportion to the
number of MDs in an area. This is partially attributable to medical
“errors”, but many more die or are injured from toxic medical
treatment. Dr. John Goffman. U.C. Berkeley emeritus professor,
in his massive study of death rates in counties across America,
found up to 80% increases in heart disease and cancers correlated
with increasing doctor density. He blamed medical radiation, even
before the routine use of CAT scans, which deliver 1000 times
more radiation than a chest x-ray, There’s no safe dose of radiation
and damage is cumulative.
There are co-factors and synergistic effects causing higher death
rates associated with more doctor offices and hospitals. Physicians
congregate in urban areas. Filthy air and constant noise from motor
vehicle traffic are toxic long term, while traffic accidents have
immediate health impacts.
Based on death rates from the early decades of the 20th century,
Dr. Samuel Milham, an internationally honored epidemiologist,
linked electro-magnetic fields from non-ionizing radiation with
60% higher mortality rates from cancer, cardiovascular disease,
diabetes and suicide in electrified cities over then powerless rural
areas.
Real health care reform must first improve Americans health. It
will require transforming AWOL, more sacred than Revelations to
the masses. Politicians have no stomach for jumping off the gravy
train, even as it heads off the economic cliff. A New American
Revolution to help Americans Lose Weight and Save Money is
needed to win the war on our health.