Universal Health Care: An Unwise Path

Our country must not travel down the road of universal health care. If we do we will be taking one more step away from personal responsibility that could eventually lead to the undoing of our country.

It was never intended that Man should entrust the well-being and longevity of his body to medical professionals. Each person has the challenge and responsibility to learn to mange the health of his own body. If you choose to enlist the aid of a physician towards this end, that's fine. But compelling all citizens to pay for medical care for all forces everyone to support modern medicine, which believes that health care is primarily the responsibility of professionals, not the individual. We willfully entrust our health to physicians who instruct us what to do in the event of illness or injury and, for the most part, we do not participate in diagnosing or treating ourselves. This is unfortunate, for in doing this we deny ourselves opportunities to learn how to manage our own bodies and heal ourselves.

This point was brought home to me about 15 years ago. I was working as a roofer at that time. One morning I awoke with severe pain in my lower back. It was so painful I could barely stand up and walk. I did not know what was wrong. I managed to get myself into a car and drive myself to a chiropractor. I had no health insurance so I did not have much money to spend on treatment. The chiropractor told me I likely had a herniated disc and there was nothing he could do for it. I did not know what to do. I managed to walk into our local library, grimacing in pain, and headed over to the health section. A book on one of the lower shelves caught my eye: The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion by Pete Egoscue. I opened the book to some pages that addressed lower back pain. The author wrote that it was possible to make herniated discs go back in place if you released tightness in certain muscle groups that were pulling on vertebrae in such a way as to permit the disc material to slip out. I took the book home, lay down on the floor and did the exercises he prescribed. These were not strenuous, "no pain, no gain" exercises. Rather, they were exercises designed to allow tight muscles to let go.

I quickly found relief from the pain. I continued to do the exercises diligently for several weeks, many times a day. Sometimes I would lie on the floor for hours, trying hard to get my muscles to let go. Within days I was walking without pain, but I did not stop there. I discovered I had lots of muscles out of whack. My posture was terrible. Egoscue said that shoulders, hips, knees and feet should all be aligned with each other, and mine were not. I studied myself and found that my body was highly dysfunctional and that I was living with pain I had become accustomed to ignoring. I studied my posture and did the suggested exercises for correcting certain problems. In the end I not only cured my painful back, I improved my overall health immensely. For years I had been trying to use my body while maintaining terrible posture. I found out how to release certain muscles so my body could function naturally. My overall strength, health and well-being were the best they had ever been. But none of this might ever have happened if I had had insurance, or worse, government health care. One doctor told me he likely would have prescribed surgery for my condition

I realized when I had that terrible back pain that I had to find a way through, so I used my brain and my psychic sense to find the information I needed to heal myself. Although I had practiced good nutrition since I was in my teens, having read Adelle Davis' books, I had never fully believed I could heal more serious problems. This experience gave me confidence there were ways to protect my own health if I only would strive to think and be aware of what to do. Since then I have studied herbs and often fought my way out of illness using them. I helped a friend in terrible pain avoid gall bladder surgery by giving him herbs, juices and a "gall bladder flush" that removed hundreds of stones from his gall bladder. And I have learned there are ways to cure serious conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer using herbs and other natural methods. And why shouldn't this be so? When we were born on Earth there was air to breathe, water to drink, plants and animals to eat. In other words, the means to survive were here on Earth. I now know there are hundreds of medicinal plants all around us - in our back yards - that can cure disease. Many of them are more effective than commonly prescribed drugs and they have no side effects.

I have not been to a doctor for many years, except for routine employment physicals, and then the doctors who examine me always say my health is excellent. Since my experience with back pain I have been on a journey of discovery for keeping myself healthy. It is fun, fascinating and reassuring to me that I do not have to rely on a cadre of medical professionals to maintain my health. If all of them disappeared tomorrow I would not be at a loss, except perhaps in a case of severe trauma. This makes me think that society would be much better off if others had this self-assurance. Our country is approaching a presidential election and some candidates are trying to use the issue of universal health care to acquire the office and secure power over the lives of others. The projected costs would be astronomical and, as best I can see, completely unnecessary. But society has become increasingly addicted to the medical profession. Many are truly afraid to be without medical insurance and comprehensive medical care. I fear our country may elect leaders on the basis of this issue - when it is not and never has been the job of a vast medical establishment to provide for our health. I fear that if and when we go down the road to universal health care we will sacrifice freedoms we may only begin to appreciate with their loss: the freedom to take care of yourself and use your common sense in matters of health.

Societies have always had their healers and ours in no exception. There are times when people need medical doctors. If you get shot or are in a serious auto wreck the chances are good you need a medical doctor. But Americans today run to medical doctors for every conceivable ailment. We are addicted to our high tech medicine and are fast losing our awareness of common sense, inexpensive methods of taking care of ourselves. If we choose universal health care this addiction will become the law of the land and those who are doing fine using simple, common sense medicine will be forced to pay for this addiction.

I never want to entrust my health to the government. It isn't their job and I know I can take care of myself better than they can if I apply wisdom and common sense In the short run, there may be conditions they can treat more successfully than I, but will I learn anything from their success, other than to depend on doctors? Modern medicine, with all its high tech advances, is often not wise. If you place doctors under the supervision of the government they will be less wise and constrained to practice their profession according to government regulations, which do not always make the health of the individual the highest priority. Doctors routinely perform unnecessary tests and procedures, not to protect the health of patients, but to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits. People sometimes die in American hospitals because someone gave the wrong medicine or a doctor performed the wrong procedure on the wrong patient. I have worked in hospitals and taken care of friends in the hospital, and I know mistakes are all too common. Yet if you were taking care of yourself or a close family member was helping you take care of yourself, you would not make those kinds of mistakes. You would care to do things right, because it is your life and well-being at stake.

America's addiction to high tech medicine frightens me. If you can discover a person's addiction you have found a way to enslave him. The drug addict is a slave because he thinks he needs the drug so badly he will do anything to get it. I am afraid we are so dependent on medical care our society might do almost anything to get it. Society might elect unwise leaders willing to use the issue to gain power over them. We must not allow this to happen. There are plenty of economic reasons why universal health care is a bad idea. But the key reason I see is the loss of individual freedom. Health is personal. We should not cede that area of responsibility to the government. If we do we will severely regret it.