Health and Health Care

[NOTE: Probably the main reason why the cost of health care has gone up over the years (faster than inflation) is the fact that the cost for treatment (through technology) has increased. If you go back 40-50 years, if you were diagnosed with cancer or heart disease, about the only thing you were prescribed was a bed to die in. And people did. Now, people have a wide palette of diagnostics, therapies, procedures, medicines that they can take to become less sick. And the price tag to become less sick is higher all the time. The technologies developed to become less sick cost someone to develop them. And the price tag to use them is part of paying back the companies that wield the technology to help others. Cancer or heart disease isn't a death sentence like it used to be decades ago. So-o-o-o-o-o technology can be expensive to diagnose and treat someone's condition. Add to that the fact that insurance premiums that the doctors / hospitals have to pay is outrageously high, doesn't help a bit for the cost of an office visit to be any less either. If the premiums went down... health care costs would go down to. As long as it's more expensive to see a doctor (with the costs a doctor has to pay) it'll always have an increasing price.]

OK... What's the difference between *HEALTH* and *HEALTH CARE?* Anybody?

Health care is what is sought and applied to your life to go from more sick to less sick.

Health is the state of your being. If you're *healthy* .. on the life-death scale, you are closer to the *life* end. If you are *sick*/*sickly* .. then you are closer to *death* (hate to sound morbid or macabre) on the life-death scale. That might be an oversimplification, but that's reality. And I'm not saying that someone with the common cold is on deaths edge and only a few ticks on the life-death scale away from death .. though they have moved closer to *death* than they are *life* when looking at the whole spectrum.

What gets me about this whole health care extravaganza is that people (driven by the gov't officials and national dominant media folks) aren't responsible for their own health .. so the gov't is the one that will make their health care decisions for them.

To me, from a LAW of ATTRACTION perspective, if you emphasize health care .. you get more and more health care. What is health care? Health care is the treatments (diagnostics, procedures, medicines, therapies, etc, etc, etc) needed to go from more sick to less sick. Or from a state of dis-ease to ease. By wanting more health care.. you get more diagnosis, procedure, medicines, therapies .. which will have to be paid for. The law of attraction states that *like* attracts *like*. So.. health care .. attracts more *health care*. A healthy state of being isn't necessarily the end result (though we hope it is) of health care.

I think, we ought to emphasize *HEALTH*. From a law of attraction perspective, health attracts more health (or better/improved health). As health increases .. the disease (or dis-ease) decreases. As health improves, diagnostics decline, medications drop away, therapies occur less, etc.

I'd imagine that if anyone did the studies on obesity and vice-born dis-eases .. that'd probably account for 30-40-50% of all of the health-care costs to get people healthier. People want to spend less on health care, they should look towards increasing their health quotient so that the need for health care diminishes over time.

Ever watch the NBC show 'The Biggest Loser?' No? Well, that's where they (the producers of that show) select about 16-20-24 people (sometimes in pairs, couples, or maybe families) that are *overweight*. And not just regular overweight but obese. What is obesity? Obesity happens when someone is 30% overweight. Super obesity happens at 50% overweight. Basically, everyone on the biggest loser is easily obese and might very well be super obese. It's a 'survivor' type reality show that someone (at least one) every week is voted off the ranch. While everyone is there during the week, they are learning about nutrition, exercise, fitness, and themselves. If someone makes it through the full 16 weeks, they'll likely have lost 80-100 lbs pretty easily... which is quite remarkable. Heck, 25 lbs would be quite remarkable. By the time the final show airs (which is about 6 months from when they started) .. the winner will likely have lost 50% or more of their original body weight. Quite amazing! People sometimes enter the show as diabetics on insulin and leave the show without the need to be dependent on insulin.

Now, I say all that because even if a person doesn't lose the poundage like they do on The Biggest Loser, but steadily lose something, that's a very good thing. Who cares if it's a half-pound or pound a week? It's slow, but it's still very good. Half a pound a week is still 25-26 pounds a year. Do that regularly for 4 years and that's 100 lbs lost! A pound a week will have someone losing 50 lbs-ish a year. Do that for a 2-4 years and someone can lose 100-200 lbs! Still quite remarkable. The thing is.. to start. Start getting more healthy.

With the advent of a lot of studies coming out these days of how obesity has grown in America by 30%, 35%, or 40% since the 1980's or 1990's, it's clear that people are sabotaging themselves causing their own health to decline towards a more stressful state where their organs have to work harder. The heart has to pump harder. The joints are under more stress by the weight on them. The pancreas doesn't generate as much good insulin as it should to digest sugar the way it should putting people into a diabetic state of being, and on, and on, and on.

If people choose NOT to get healthy. Then that's their choice. This might sound like I'm lacking tact and compassion for others. It's their choice. If people choose to abuse their bodies with an over indulgence of food, alcohol, drugs, etc. that is their choice to live with.

Ya know, it's kinda like the way there are laws on many state books for motorcycle riders / operators to have helmets covering their head. I think, that if they choose not to wear a helmet, then they ought to sign some kind of waiver that states they know what they are doing that in the event of a motorcycle accident (while not wearing a helmet) that might compromise their life, they won't be administered any life-saving measures to prolong their life. That way, they are taking full responsibility for the length of their life, and that medical staff (in rescue squads, ambulances, clinics, or hospitals) will not have to invest their time (or resources) to rescue this soul to extend their life by administering any life-saving measures. It's their choice. Let them live (or die) with their choice. At least, if they make this choice, it's their choice and not the gov't making it for them.

Same with health. If people choose not to improve their health. They ought to be able to take themselves out of the *health pool* by signing some document saying they are in full responsibility of what happens in their life according to the decisions they make.

Same with the vices people engage in that might have health consequences.. abusing alcohol, abusing drugs and/or chemicals, tobacco, etc. People have choices. If they choose to abuse their own temple (body) then they ought not to expect everybody else (the gov't) to pick up their health tab.

So-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o what am I getting at? I think, if there's a plan needed to help people and their health, let's minister to their health and do things to make it better. Let's put system's of some kind in place that keep track of a persons vital statistics (age, height, weight, measurements of arms, legs, chest, hips, blood pressure, food consumed activity, calorie exercise activity, etc, etc, etc, whatever) that allow people to see how their ACTIONS (what they do) shows their RESULTS of what they do. Let people see how when they eat a gallon of ice cream or something very fatty, that their weight goes up, and how when they eat things of a high nutrition content (that feeds the body the fuel it needs) how their weight will typically stay level or go down (depending on the physical activity of the day/week).

If the gov't is bent on spending a billion dollars, invest the money into a system that will track all of this information and make it easy to see how ACTIONS has RESULTS. Some kind of health blogging system.

If it came down to multiple billions of dollars, if the gov't wants to do something for everyone, then make a program that gets everyone a bicycle to ride to work, or pays for the widening of roads for bike paths (or both), or pays for the expense of a monthly gym membership (with exercise and nutrition coaching), or does a number of singular things for those that want to increase their quotient of health. If someone doesn't want a bicycle, then maybe they can do the gym membership. Or if they don't want either, have a local neighborhood group exercise meeting kind of thing they can go to on a regular basis.

Now *that* would be a true stimulus package. Stimulate people to increase their health. Stimulate people to ride a bicycle to-/from- work. Stimulate fitness clubs to bring those in that lack high degrees of health.

That's what I call a true HEALTH PLAN.