The Harsh Reality of U.S. Healthcare Costs - but WHO cares?
Consumers suffer as corporations profit. Americans remain stuck swimming in sickness without anywhere to go.
“The U.S. population alone would have at least a million more millionaires if we prioritized people’s health.”
We would be maximizing earning potential and saving hundreds of thousands in preventing expenses given to our broken healthcare system. We would improve both years of life and Quality of Life (QoL), allowing people to do more than just barely survive.
We would be able to give people a thriving CHANCE at a thriving life.
We have built and encouraged the growth of many billion-dollar companies, but trickle-down economics really only work when corporations are capped or clearly incentivized to trickle-down. Furthermore, we must interrogate whether insatiable consumerism and vast corporatism are truly generating an economic engine that produces products and services that serve as overall good for society.
I believe there exists a great false misconception about the U.S. landscape in health and healing. Lend me your ear and let me explain just a smidgen of my concerns. Today, people lack the opportunity to make something of themselves, their lives, their legacy and what they can strive after.
They are overwhelmed and overburdened and burned out. Angst about the climate, growing heated in furious debate about what’s right and wrong and who gets to have the next set of privileged rights this week. We are severely confused and ‘confuzzled’ about the facts of life as I like to say.
We are distracted and dismayed. We are so severely dehydrated we are being led astray by the beatific mirage in the middle of the desert. This is not the end. This is not the solution. We are far from grace, far from salvation at this stage. We have so much more work to do and we must face these facts if we hope to move forward at all.
We cannot hide or shudder or run away in childlike offense just because some of us want to have deep discussions about the strongest drivers of disease and the more complex, complicated, and convoluted systems of society today that prevent health and prosperity. These are hard conversations for many. We cannot cancel them.
People are sick and stuck swimming in disease and dishonest systems perpetuating the problems of modernity.
These are overwhelming ideas for most, but we must acknowledge and take notice of these realities if we hope to overcome them and empower our communities forward towards a healthier and more whole culture.
At least that’s what I’m chasing after and I hope you’ll join in on the race as we go.
Let’s begin.
Chemicals. Contaminants. Politics and Pollutants.
We have chemical laden soils, waterways, foods, fragrances, and even breastmilk and umbilical cords. And this isn’t even news anymore.
We know this for decades but only in recent years has the news grown wise to publicize the concerns for forever chemicals. Babies are being born with chemical burdens already circulating through their tiny bodies. If what they say is true, that the dose makes the poison then I guess it makes sense why kids today are so incredibly sick, because a teaspoon of sugar, BPA, or PFAS will have a much higher concentration effect for newborns than they will a mid-life adult.
Yes, babies are being pumped full of hazardous man-made toxins. So, if 100% of the breastmilk is contaminated, don’t you think mom deserves a chance at a clean and healthy life too? Clearly, she must be dealing with some issues if she has all these different chemicals traveling throughout her body too! What the hell are we doing leaving women and children to be corrupted by these chemical giants. Don’t we say that we care most about women, infants, and children? If actions speak louder than words, then I would say the silence on this issue is just deafening.
Is it safe to say we have a reason to have legitimate concerns for 7accin3 manufacturers, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Food, Big Chem, Big Oil, and other industrialized complexes that act as multi-national conglomerate monopolies across the world? Just wondering…
Our own negligence & gluttony act as parasitic infections on our country.
What’s even worse is how much our culture has led the same gluttony and excessive consumerism across much of the rest of the world.
Toxic smoke is spewing from an inferno at a recycling plant in Richmond, Indiana
- CNN
Industrial fire prompts evacuation order in Indiana city, Richmond - AP News
What we know about the Indiana industrial fire that's forced residents to evacuate - NPR
We are not alone in our faults, but we must acknowledge our mistakes.
Our people deserve better protectors and providers.
If we truly care about economic viability, development, and sustainable means of prosperity then we must alter our perspectives and prioritize real health & true medicine over what dominates the current healthcare landscape today.
Healthcare costs are draining businesses and local communities.
Chronic health issues are costing millions of dollars to individuals while Big Pharma & Big Insurance win big and most people still suffer & struggle through their symptoms.
Expansive and Expensive Healthcare Services Do Not = HEALTH
Increasing rates of autism, ADHD, environmental toxins, autoimmune diseases, fatty liver, obesity, and mental illness issues in youth should keep us up at night. These factors forcibly restrict our combined attention, ability, and income generation for good.
Cancer treatments cost over hundreds of thousands of dollars and no one bats an eye… but we can’t afford to pay living wages to qualified professionals with hearts dedicated to working with at risk youth, single moms, and a child’s first 1000 days.
We have flashy weight loss drugs costing $1000/month, but we can’t seem to afford to pay our schools enough money for education & training for cooking, nutrition, healthy eating - which would all lead towards incredible ROIs and cost savings for the next 80 yrs.
Look at pictures from the 1950s-1970s and you can find generally good health in much of the population; they were not suffering from our modern rates of diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, autism, ADHD, autoimmune disease, or mental illness. Sure, there were touches of these issues here and there, but they were RARE.
Now, they are normalized. Normal is a bloody myth.
What we must deal with today is a disgusting contrast to what ought to be normal in a supposedly advanced and civilized, hypothetically free and enlightened society.
Perhaps our definitions have skewed along with the science over the last 5 decades, from no fat butters to sugary sweetened milks and supersized soft drinks marketed to teenagers at every corner bodega.
Name a condition, name a disease and I can point you to the blatant neglect and failures presented from the standard systems we have today. We “zap” thousands of thyroids a year without batting an eye or reprioritizing dollars to look at epidemiological trends to discover what, when, where, and how the epidemic of thyroid disease has overtaken the US, and especially women.
We discount gastrointestinal disorders paired with struggling mental health to idiopathic psychopathy or hysteria rather than giving women a chance to speak and perhaps teach us something about their own unique health experiences.
We’ve abused our privileges and there are certain consequences for our actions. We are reaping what we’ve sowed. We are seeing the direct result of the systemic incentive structures we’ve had in place over the last 50+ years.
Look back to those photos of the 1950s-1970s and you will not find that 1 in 3 people are obese or that 1 in 3 kids would end up developing diabetes in their lifetime. You would not find such shocking rates of allergies and autoimmune disease.
Maybe it’s because we’ve tortured our soils, or maybe how we’ve played God to genetically modify our plants (and animals). Or perhaps it’s due to the overwhelming and never-ending supply of petrol chemicals that circle the earth in chem trails, polluted waterways, manufactured products for convenience wrecking chaos on our internal endocrine systems as we simultaneously alter the DNA of frogs, disrupting natural ecosystem balances due to unregulated run offs.
You tell me, what are your thoughts? What are the problems that you see and what are the solutions that you pose forward?
Are we seeing the ill-effects of disturbing fallacies in the research propagated by the infamous Ancel Keys or the shadow-ban of John Yudkin. Is it the sugar or is it the fat?
Perhaps it is the ultra-processing of drug-like substances like sugar, wheat, corn, soy, and other pulverized plants we’ve manufactured for foodstuffs? Pulverized plants turned into concentrated powders like cocaine from coca leaves and sugar from sugar cane or GMO bleached white wheat flour from natural wheat berries are all prime examples of what can go awry when we go too far without recourse.
No wonder so many people experience psychological effects from ultra-processed foods such as food addiction, anxiety, depression, or genuine psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, disassociation, and others when consuming wheat, corn, sugar, gluten, dairy, and other common foods.
And have you looked at our teenagers lately? Do you actually call into question why they are so mentally sick, down, depressed, anxious and overwhelmed while slowly becoming the most medicated generation of all? Maybe you turn the other cheek and look the other way. Let’s just say that young adults have been dealing with way more than they should over the last few years. We sacrificed their health, their peace of mind and their optimism and it’s atrocious if you ask me. Don’t even get me started on children’s physical and mental health.
Maybe you have laundry to fold, dishes to wash, and too many daily responsibilities to take care of your whole household, let alone your own health. I get it. I do. I don’t blame you. I really don’t. I blame the system.
In a sense, “I don’t hate the player, I hate the game.” But the reality check is due because this ain’t no game to be playing with and I think you can see that. These are real lives with real effects and long-lasting consequences.
I think you want the best for your family and friends. I think they probably want the best for you. The problem is, no one knows what the heck they should even do anymore, so they feel overwhelmed with analysis paralysis and make ignorant choices without time to learn, research, practice, and make healthier habits to last a lifetime.
The problem is not often the people, but the system they are placed in.
So now, let’s go back again to those pictures from the 1950s-1970s.
This was a different America.
This was a time before several of the major factors suspected to be driving down our poor health in America today. This was a time before the far overreach of pesticides across US croplands. This was a time before the extreme 7accin3 schedule kids are placed on today.
This was a time before the BILLIONS of dollars in lawsuits had to be paid by the likes of Abbott, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and others for their absolutely disgusting marketing and false promotion of drugs to doctors and consumers that ruined so many lives across America. Yes, I’m talking about Vioxx, Baby Powder, the opioid epidemic, and so many more. Profiting off people’s pain has a long history.
I suspect that over the next 50 years forward we will see the same kind of payments and lawsuits filed against leading manufacturers of standard use medications in the treatment of ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression, such as common SSRIs, Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, and many more.
Just look at the recent rise in news reporting of plastic chemical fires, train derailment pollution and unregulated burn offs of extremely dangerous chemicals now spreading across the skies, impacting citizens, waterways, and all infinitely interconnected ecosystems in its wake. And we wonder why things feel so screwed up in the world of health today…. Haha it’s actually laughable how awful we are at deducing facts from reality if we still don’t have a clue.
Sherlock Holmes would be having a royal fit and Charles Darwin would be rolling in his grave right now if they knew what was going on these days.
The system is not set up for individuals to succeed, but rather the scale is weighed heavily in the direction of pharmaceutical manufacturers and elitist professional health organizations to have a weird way to alter education, manipulate data, negotiate a better narrative to their liking all while consumers continue to be diagnosed, prescribed, and excessively pay for more and more healthcare services and medications despite the dwindling health of the US population overall.
They say if the bathtub is flooding, you should put down your teaspoon shovels and learn to turn off the faucet. Well now, the whole house is flooded and we’re swimming neck deep in our own filthy mess of a distorted pursuit of health in this country disguised and prettied up as our shiny and shimmering wealthy healthcare industrial complex. At some point we will fall in whole because we’ve been bleeding out for the last 50 years. When will we take proactive action for prevention?
Thank you for your spot on insights.👌🏼