The Quacks are Angry

Besides Republicans, the people most upset about health care reform seem to be certain "alternative medicine" gurus. Mike Adams:

Today the medical mafia struck another devastating blow to the health and freedom of all Americans. With the support of an inarguably corrupt Congress that has simply abandoned the real needs of the American people, the sick-care industry has locked in a high-profit scheme of disease and monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals in a nation that can ill afford either one.

And this Pharma-funded betrayal, it turns out, was led by the Democrats. Passed on a 219-212 vote that was only accomplished thanks to closed-door, last-minute secret meetings among the last holdouts, this new legislation puts America under the stranglehold of the medical mafia while doing absolutely nothing to address real health care reform. There is no mention in the bill, for example, of vitamin D for preventing cancer, or orthomolecular medicine for preventing degenerative disease. There's not even a word about protecting health freedom or ending the century of oppression that has been waged against naturopathic practitioners by the AMA, FDA and FTC.

He has another post on the bill titled "Health Care Dictatorship: a Crime Against America."

It is interesting to me the way various sorts of anti-elitist paranoia come together here. People like Mike Adams are suspicious of the "medical establishment" with its chemicals and white coats, and are looking for a more "natural", "organic" route to health. They dream about fighting disease by eating things grown in their friends gardens, or gathered by noble savages from strange growths on rare rain forest trees. They also want to be healthy by their own efforts, and they think that if they just eat well enough, exercise enough, and stay away from poisons, they will be healthy. They want to be in control of their own lives.

Tea Partiers are suspicious of Big Government, and are looking for solutions that bypass Washington; some of them are probably equally unhappy with Big Business. Their model of health care is that regular folks will talk to their regular doctors in offices insulated from both Washington and Wall Street. They also imagine that if outsiders just leave them alone, they can find their own solutions.

The pharmaceutical companies, with their vast, secret laboratories, their battalions of lobbyists, and their record of poisoning people with dubious medicines, represent everything frightening about the modern world. And, honestly, they did very well in this bill, which will expand insurance coverage for medicines without doing much to reduce prices. (Many Democrats want to take up that problem in a separate bill that would modify Medicare.) The desire to opt out of our system, with its corruptions and evasions of responsibility, is strong in several sorts of Americans.

Alas for the health nuts and survivalists of the world, it doesn't work that way. We all die eventually, and even for the healthiest that decline is usually fraught with disease and bodily decay. Everybody can get sick, and anyone can be in an accident. Your belief that your diet and exercise routine will keep you healthy is largely an illusion. You are one missed step, or one little cloud of bacteria, away from a medical disaster that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix. And when that happens to you, you will be glad to be insured against the cost.

The only way to guarantee that you will be covered when your time comes is a system that protects everyone.