Gosh, there were impassioned comments on Friday’s post, “Whole Foods Boycott, Health Care Reform, and I Guess Conservatives Can Eat Arugula, Too.” Thanks to everybody who wrote in on both sides of this issue. And thanks for being civil about it: civility can be rare in the online world and I appreciate readers of this blog for having it.
May I defend myself, please, on a couple of points? First, I didn’t say that Obama’s health care reform proposal was like the war in Iraq: I said that rushing it through with great public uncertainty was like the push and the rush to go to war. The likening was the push and the rush, not health care and war.
I simply have honest questions and concerns. Here are more of them:
How are we going to pay for this? And the bail-outs and the stimulus and the cash for clunkers and all the rest of it?
Is all medical care going to be 3rd party payer, whether public or private?
Why are people who opt for private insurance never going to be allowed to change carriers?
How about alternative health care? What’s covered? What isn’t?
And even within allopathic care, what about physician choice? Just this weekend a young woman at a conference asked my opinion on some problems she was having on going off The Pill. I suggested that she see an endocrinologist, and preferably talk with two or three so she can find someone who understands her lifestyle, diet, and how she chooses to live. She said, “I can’t do that: I live in Canada. If my GP sends me to an endocrinologist, that’s the only one I’ll get to see.” I felt bad for her.
What will being part of this system do to health freedom in general?
Listen, friends: I’m a writer and a philosopher, not a politician. I’m just asking questions.
Can we just think outside the box here for a minute? Why not offer health care credits for people who eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet; or have a cholesterol under 150 (that’s the “heart-attack-proof” number beneath which no one has ever had a heart attack); or who exercise daily? Why not tax the heck out of junk food? People will still buy it because it’s addictive, but they’ll be contributing to their own medical costs for later. Why not, as Montel Williams (not a conservative at all) suggested when I was on his show a few weeks back, legalize marijuana and tax it 50% to cover medical costs and help defray the deficit?
So, let me hear from you again. If you have answers to the questions posed above, or know where I can find them, God bless you. If you don’t have the answers and I don’t have the answers, then maybe they shouldn’t be so darned hard to get.
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