The Centrist Party – Healthcare

Health – Food – Lifestyle:

Real health-care helps people be healthier. The rest should be emergency care. Instead we are paying a price for bad policies from the 1970’s. That turned us into  a disease-care system. Those policies need to be reconsidered to address  America’s failing health.

Fixing Health & Lowering Costs

The FDA needs reasonable policy to fight special interests. Unhealthy food and lifestyles are increasing healthcare costs. We need to get back to where we were in around the 1950’s. Back then we did not have super-sugars and people actually were able to eat more ‘real’ food. But that’s not the only issue.

Protecting Health (Not Healthcare)

It is quite clear there is a lack of political will to prevent bad health. That has resulted in a less healthy population and rising healthcare costs.

This lack of political will has now caused a healthcare cost crisis. So the answer for the long-term is not more money, the answer is better health. Getting special interests out of the way of the FDA is needed. Additionally focusing political will driven by evidence, will net better results.

If the FDA is not sufficiently objective and empowered to act on behalf of public health, the people pay the price. Issues that prevent the FDA from achieving healthier recommendations require public awareness and political will.

Food & Drugs

Merely approving drugs and examining food is not enough to assess the national health needs in America.

• Healthier people would reduce medication needs.
• We don’t necessarily need faster food, we need safer healthier food.
• Not focusing on health will continue to increase the cost of healthcare.

Ignorance is NOT Bliss

And, because this issue has not been addressed in a healthy manner we all pay more. It would still cost less to institute universal healthcare. And better health regulations would reduce our costs. Continue to ignore the problem only increases cost. Keep in mind, health also relates to productivity and a stronger economy. They are all related.

In a healthy system, we would be healthier. Healthcare would be less needed. Therefore smart governance is needed.

Critical Health Environmental Factors

1. Pollution in General
   1. Degrades our Food and Water
   2. Causes costly disease and disorders
2. Global Warming
   1. Human Heat Stress/Death
   2. Floods also Impact Human Health
   3. Disease Vectors are shifting
      1. Increased humidity promotes bacterial growth
      2. Tropical diseases moving north
3. Plastics Pollution
   1. Introduced a global risk factor
   2. Impacting land/aid/ocean & fresh water
   3. Impacting animal life
   4. Impacting human health

US Healthcare and Cost as percentage of GDP as of 2018:

America’s Disease-Care System

It can be argued we don’t have a healthcare system in America. We have a disease care system. Policy favors caring for dis-ease of health in America as illustrated in the cost of healthcare statistics. By 2003 over 15% of the entire GDP of America is spent on healthcare. As of 2018, it’s up to 17%, and rising.

Thus, policy favoring ‘the people’ that deals with the cause for bad health would be more beneficial to Americans.

There are a lot of different things making our health worse. Some are more easily addressed than others. Better government policy can do a lot of good. But we need to get policy focused on helping ‘the people, not the wealth of corporations. When corporations focus too much on profit our society suffers. This is not to say profit is bad, but that undue profit at the expense of society does not a healthy country make.

Obesity

1. Caused by lack of healthy government regulation
2. Costing Americans billions of dollars
3. Causing many costly diseases and disorders.

CDC – Department of Health and Human Services (PDF)

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

The Food Lobby

The food lobby is a special interest. Ask yourself, why does a ‘food lobby’ exist? Lobbyists exist to increase profits for their industry. Like cigarettes, food can be made more addictive. Food corporations argue regulation reduces freedom. But they argue that to increase their profit. Not to increase freedom. And, actually, making Americans less healthy in many ways removes our freedoms. The less healthy people are, the more it costs them in personal freedom and productivity. It also impacts physical and psychological health.

So, like cigarettes, addictive foods affect our health. Including our body and brain chemistry. And yes, that reduces our freedom. Thus, food policy needs to be fixed to lower healthcare costs and increase freedom in healthy lifestyle. Remember, unhealthy foods and eating habits encourage consumption like any other drug. But there is more risk, because people don’t look at food as a danger.

Americans are in fact paying the food industry to make us less healthy. This is a massive risk to America’s economic health, as well as our physical health.

We need to evaluate our priorities. Redirecting our efforts toward responsible food policy will serve us better in the future. That, in turn, will help reduce costs. U.S. Census Bureau

What we can do in the mean time.

Each of us needs to learn more about what is right for our body. To be healthy we need certain things:

• Nutrition: Learning what each individual body needs is a personal awareness that takes sometimes years to understand. Each person is different and the foods we eat impact our quality of life. Natural foods along with moderation and balance help keep us healthy.
• Sleep: Allowing the body and mind to rest is essential to health. Healthy sleep means rejuvenating the mind and the body, allowing deep sleep is important to a healthy lifestyle.
• Work/Life Balance: Work is our way of sharing our value and ability with those around us. It provides income in an exchange of our ability and talent to others. Physical and mental work has good for our health. A good work/life balance is also healthy.

The Industrial Age

Lifestyles changed. We seem to have convinced ourselves less sleep is good so we can do more work. Good nutrition gave way fast food. The trend in the 80’s and 90’s was mostly typical Americans had to work harder so the executives could make more money. Again, we make them richer while they milk us dry. Think about that.

Don’t get this wrong. The Centrist Party is not against hard work, but fair pay for fair contribution. 1% getting rich by taking unfair advantage of the those that generate that profit is unjust. This seems to be related to monopoly and how the GOP has abandoned the natural competition of capitalism in favor of making CEO’s richer.

Speed Kills

We move fast, eat unhealthy foods (in a rush) and sleep less. This results in disturbed sleep, rising anxiety, headaches, illness, obesity and disease. Including cancers and psychological disorders. This of course increases our dependency on medicines and treatment because we are less healthy.

If the goal was to sleep less and enjoy life more, we seem to have missed the point. Less sleep and fast living usually means our work and quality of life suffers. Common sense in our health means learning more about what our own life needs to be healthy.

Science & Political Issues

Lobbyists intimidate politicians by saying they will take away campaign funding if they don’t support them. So yes, our physical health is directly impacted by special interest influence. Because of no one wants to get the money out of politics, we the people suffer more and pay more.

More recently we have seen political interests held higher that the responsibility of our leaders to support the Constitution. This in turn led to intimidation of scientists and worse. The use of the Executive branch of government to mislead the American people about truth. Trump wasn’t the first to do this, but the record does indicate that Trump holds the record for misleading and outright lying to the people.

The above graph indicates that no recent president has been able to address this problem.

Note: Red lines are set mid year (before taking office) to indicate metric data points.

Policies, habits, ignorance, education, and even our own naiveté have created the perfect storm to bring us to this point.

Smoking Tobacco Usage Statistics

National/State Tobacco Control Program

National Flu

CDC Widgets Link

Unite America with The Centrist Party

Enough is enough. We must unite to reclaim our government. Join the Centrist Party. Work together to heal our nation and return balance in governance and common sense for the nation and the people.

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