Dr Andrew Weil: Conservative on Healthcare Reform
Submitted by Michael Nystrom on Sat, 08/15/2009 - 10:25
by Dr. Andrew Weil, Founder and Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine
August 14, 2009 | Huffington Post
I appeared on Larry King Live Wednesday night to discuss health care reform with a panel of respected, high-profile physicians. I sounded the themes I wrote about in The Wrong Diagnosis: that Americans must change the content of health care, not just access to it, or we'll remain among the unhealthiest people in the developed world, and the costs will sink us.
Bill Frist, a physician and former Senate Republican majority leader from Tennessee, responded with what has become the conservative line: that "we do have the best health care" and what Americans principally need is "insurance reform" rather than improved health care practices. Later in the program were video clips of what host Wolf Blitzer termed "conservatives" disrupting town hall meetings on health care reform. Clearly, the prospect of change in health care is highly emotional and disturbs many people.
But here's my question: Since when is it conservative to embrace new, overpriced, corrupt systems, like the health-destroying and ruinously expensive protocols of much of modern medicine? "Conservative" has several meanings, but two central ones are "favoring traditional views and values," and "avoiding excess."
I hold that nothing could be more wild, unconstrained, and downright liberal than the path medicine has taken in just the last 20 years -- an unprecedented bacchanalia of excess and contempt for traditional American values.
Pharmaceuticals, once just one of many therapeutic modalities, are now synonymous with medical care; more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines for chronic health problems. Medical journals, formerly bastions of objectivity, are today often ghostwritten shills for moneyed interests. And physicians, once free to make healing their only goal, must now obey the dictates of lawyers and stockholders by ordering endless tests and dangerous, dubious surgeries for even minor conditions.
Govt "health" care: Illegal, immoral, INSANE
Why ANY govt meddling in health care is a bad idea:
1) It would be ILLEGAL, being an obvious/blatant violation of the 10th Amendment.
2) It would be IMMORAL, as no one should be forced to pay for the health care of another.
3) It would be INSANE, as the ONLY thing this govt is good at is KILLING people and DESTROYING things.
My freedom is more important than your great idea.
Many die hard liberals look up to Weil
This article ought to give them pause to reconsider their position...
LOL, Weil's wise voice of reason really stirred up
the worst of the HuffPo hornets. The dimmer ones indignantly perceived that their beloved label Liberal was used in an unflattering manner. I do think it may not have been the perfect word, either for communication to Libs or even in its classic sense of the word liberal. I don't think of classical liberalism as meaning wildly excessive (though that is a good fit for Liberal.)
Anyway, it was a very good article, I hope the smarter Libs will think on it.
What I don't
understand is why they are messing with people who already have insurance. I thought this was about the uninsured. Seems to me they want to control everyone of us. I really don't see how they are going to pay for any of this anyhow.
What you don't understand ...
is that what is being proposed is government control over who lives and who dies ... and they decide whom they want to help live and whom they'd rather didn't. And, at some point, no one will escape their system.
They are already poisoning our water systems (fluoridation), poisoning out air (chemtrails), poisoning our foods (GMO frankenfoods, plus artificial ingredients, plus pesticides and herbicides), and poisoning our bodies directly via pharmaceuticals.
Apparently we aren't getting sick enough fast enough for them. The only reason we have a health crisis is due to deliberate poisoning (which is directly responsible for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, rising cancer rates, etc). To help alleviate that government produced crisis, this 1,000 page bill is a camouflaged way of introducing veterinary medicine for humans on a large, institutionalized scale. In other words, when they deem us useless or penniless or otherwise inconvenient, they'll just put us down.
If you as a doctor prescribe exercise and your patient ...
dies, you can get sued.
If you as a doctor prescribe nothing and your diagnosis is that nothing is wrong and your patient dies, you can get sued.
If you as a doctor prescribe a supplement and your patient dies, you can get sued.
If you as a doctor prescribe a drug and your patient dies ...
you can't get sued assuming you follow the guidelines of the drug prescribed.
You cannot set up a clinic if you are a nurse.
You cannot set up a clinic if you have a phd in anatomy, biology, chemistry, or health and fitness.
Only a doctor can legally establish a medical clinic.
What is wrong with this picture?
Allow a practice to be established and then allow it to be held accountable through property rights and fraud laws.
Why this is not common sence is beyond me.
WAHOR!!
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/48994
WAHOR!!
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/48994
rhino: You are right about all of that.
Also: "Last one seen, first one sued."
That means say an ER or family doc takes care of a sore throat for 45 year old male and 6 months later, he dies of a heart attack. The doc could get sued for not discussing and documenting in the chart: smoking cessation, checking cholesterol, an aspirin per day, etc.
What a medical system and not one word in HR 3200 about tort reform!
good article!
One of the forms of modern medicine that makes me angry, and then I have to laugh because it's so sad and pathetic, is the use of pharmaceuticals to regulate blood pressure.
You don't even need a doctor to regulate your blood pressure, let alone pharmaceuticals that cost money. Can you breathe, stretch, walk, drink water, and pee all by yourself? If you can, then you can regulate your blood pressure all by yourself, too.
Much of modern medicine is just a scam to get money out of one person's pocket and into another's. The pharmaceutical companies own the nation's universities.
Bump for truth!
great post...
"I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace".
Thomas Paine
"I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace".
Thomas Paine
BAM !!
ajwyoming hit's that one out of the park !
o yea
Frist was not lying
Lets face it, Frist gets the best healthcare in the world. Now if we could all get the healthcare plan Frist has... well. Problem solved.
I want Bill Frists healthcare plan.
me too.
me too.
Please become a fan: www.facebook.com/dailypaul
Third times a charm...
...
WTP Federal Lawsuit to BAN ALL ELECTRONIC VOTING
http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2009-05-11...
.................................
http://www.enduswars.org/
http://peaceoftheaction.org/
Great article!
We need all the help we can get battling this monster.