Get Active in Health Care Reform

What you can do now—to reform health care!

EIGHT RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON THE 2010 NAUTILUS GOLD AWARD FOR THE BEST BOOK IN THE US IN HEALTH AND HEALING, “A RETURN TO HEALING”

1. Start with yourself; healthy lifestyle comes first.

Lifestyle strategies such as diet, exercise, adequate sleep, stress reduction, weight control, avoidance of toxic exposures, and emotional and spiritual balance in life are always the first line of defense.

2. Insist on prevention—at all levels.

Ask your legislators to put into effect the preventive measures recommended in “A Return to Healing.” These will greatly reduce costs by making Americans much healthier. The list includes:

1. Fund programs that make exercise universally available and attractive to Americans.

2. Tax junk food; subsidize sustainable agriculture and healthy, organic foods.

3. Require disclosure to patients of all treatments, both mainstream and CAM, backed by evidence.

4. Broadly support preventive health testing.

5. Ban direct-to-consumer ads for drugs; advertise healthy lifestyle.


3. Attend an integrative clinic in your area.

Integrative and CAM centers are becoming common nationwide. Seek one out and make sure the entire family has access to the new medicine.

4. Support research in CAM.

Now is the time to support federally funded research on par with mainstream medical research (including comparative effectiveness research) for CAM at the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Presently it is an embarrassingly small portion of the NIH's overall budget. Public funding is crucial, because the private sector will only fund research that is profitable.

5. Demand that insurance policies cover complementary and alternative medicine.

Now is the time to modernize insurance coverage so it extends integrative medicine to everyone. Most non-invasive, natural, or CAM treatments are not covered today. This drives up costs for everyone! Make sure your legislators understand that the new medicine saves lives and money.

6. Radically reform the FDA.

With the FDA's credibility at its worst ever, there has never been a better time to enact legislation to reform it from the ground up.

7. Support health insurance for all Americans.

Health insurance is a right and should be available for all Americans. Yet even more advanced reform is needed: Our “disease-care” system is wasteful, counterproductive, inefficient, prone to corruption, and even lethal.

8. Support the patient's right to freedom of choice and the right to know.

Because of monopolistic practices, patients are not informed of all treatments known from evidence to benefit their condition. What's the point of extending insurance to all Americans if they don't have access to the treatment they prefer. Cost-saving and quality measures that can heal our broken health care system

Drawn from the highly acclaimed, gold award-winning new book, A Return to Healing

1. Support prevention and healthy lifestyle for everyone.

The preventive measures recommended in A Return to Healing will reduce costs by making Americans healthier throughout their lifetimes. Our list of recommendations includes:

· Fund new programs that make exercise universally available, affordable, and attractive.

· Tax junk food; subsidize sustainable agriculture and healthy, organic foods.

· Disclose all treatments backed by evidence.

· Expand preventive screens.

· Ban direct-to-consumer TV ads for drugs; advertise healthy lifestyle.


2. Expand complementary/alternative medicine (CAM).

Growing evidence shows that preventive medicine and CAM are often the most cost-effective first line of defense. More research is needed (including comparative effectiveness research) for CAM at the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, whose work is still an embarrassingly small portion of the NIH's budget.

3. Require that insurers cover proven CAM treatments.

We need to modernize insurance coverage so that it extends integrative medicine access to everyone. Most non-invasive, natural, or CAM treatments are not covered by Medicare and private insurers, even when provided by state licensed practitioners. It's time for legislators to understand that the new medicine saves lives and money.

4. Radically reform the FDA.

With the FDA’s credibility at its worst ever, there has never been a better time to enact legislation to reform it from the ground up.

5. Support health insurance for all Americans.

Government-sponsored single-payer insurance can cut health care costs by up to 30 percent. But even more advanced reform is needed: Our current “disease-care” system is wasteful, counterproductive, inefficient, prone to corruption, and even lethal. Health insurance for everyone is a necessary reform, but alone is not sufficient. See A Return to Healing for more detail on how an update of the medical paradigm (see #1– 4 above) is needed along with reform of health-care financing.

6. Expand freedom of choice and the right to know.

A large portion of our population now demands and believes in CAM remedies, and many such treatments are -evidence-based. But because of monopolistic practices, patients are not always informed of all the treatments known from evidence to benefit their condition, nor are they always given the freedom to choose such treatments according to their preferences or beliefs.