One commenter here on OEN said, "Any person who wants to keep for profit, parasitic health insurance intact should be removed from contention [for presidential candidacy]. As long as they exist we will never had true universal health Care, but continue to be nothing but a health insurance support system."
Ron DeSantis, one of the new generation of populist conservatives taking over the Republican Party, has had the idea to initiate a huge class-action lawsuit regarding the pharmaceutical industry's role in the opioid crisis.
Journalist Andrei Vltcheck decried the "appalling cry-baby selfishness" that steals the true political narrative and keeps people away from real issues and horrors that are occurring in both your country and abroad." He said, "You know, Trump, one sure way to make 'America Great Again' is to make your own people 'think again'. To detox them from the pathologies that your regime has created, from the horrible neurosis which has reduced them to what they are now... Teach your own citizens about real patriotism: hard work, deep thinking, altruism. Teach them how to build a kind, compassionate society, with a great quality of life, healthy environment, and great culture."
Alternative health practitioner Sayer Ji recently wrote, "In a promising new development, on June 19th, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo) introduced legislation, Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act, which 'removes the immunity big tech companies receive under Section 230 unless they submit to an external audit that proves by clear and convincing evidence that their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral. Sen. Hawley's legislation does not apply to small and medium-sized tech companies.'"
Charles Hugh Smith says innovation can help: "Cartels and monopolies are especially vulnerable to structural innovation, as the high costs they impose on customers and society eventually threaten to bankrupt households and even the state itself. To save itself from insolvency, the political-economic power structure must either accept innovation or it will be swept away by innovation." He cautioned, though, that "Vested interest are remarkably disinterested in costs borne by others, and remarkably interested in policy tweaks that give the PR appearance of addressing unaffordable costs of the cartel that pays their salary," saying that there was no easy, painless way to obsolete entire sectors. "It boils down," he says regarding similar problems in higher education, "To two very simple principles: accredit the student, not the institution and teach every student how to rigorously learn on their own. These common-sense concepts would dismantle the artificial scarcity of credentials imposed by the higher education cartel." I would recommend a similar course of learning to be your own doctor for most purposes, learning what constitutes a real emergency needing expert help, and being available to help those you love.
In another article, Charles Hugh Smith noted, "We want to be conned: we want to believe the elixir will make our aches and pains go away, that the new face in politics will clear out the rot of corruption, that rising prices for everything means we're getting richer and so on... That we fall for fakes is understandable, given that's all we have left in the public sphere."
However, if you lack the money for "good care", you will go ahead and settle for affordable care, even if you want better care. My friend who lost his wife to colon cancer says there are clinics in his city (Houston, Texas) where the Hispanics go and get reasonably priced care. And I learned just this morning that Walmart, bless their hearts, are said to be opening up clinics where people can get basic testing and care for under $50 for most items. Whatever else I think of Walmart aside, this is the best news I've heard in a long time.
In a real collapse, blogger Dmitri Orlov who wrote The Five Stages of Collapse recommends, "Children's healthcare should be prioritized above all else, since healthy children are the basis for the future workforce, while retirees and those not economically active should be afforded a modicum of mainly palliative care for the purpose of maintaining public morale. Geriatric medicine in the US currently accounts for 35% of all medical spending: this needs to be brought down to roughly 2%." Japan, where I live, would be aghast at such a thought. Yet in hard times historically they have done far worse things to their elderly dependents. We may eventually be forced to make excruciating decisions.
To sum up, I recommend (1) looking into legislative means of thwarting the profiteering and creating a more humane health-care system, bearing in mind that while such legislation will fail in our horribly corrupted Congress at this time, we need to have good ideas waiting in the wings when that breaks down. We can be certain the forward-thinking profiteers have their own ideas that they wish to spring on us. Sumitra Joy, commenting on the second article of my series, pointed me to House bill HR 1384 an example of helpful legislation. Greer's ideas above also strike me as especially well informed.
(2) Be aware of divide-and-conquer tactics. It is easy to spot them when applied to others, but you have to keep a really open mind to see when they are being used against yourself.
(3) Assume some degree of collapse of the current system is inevitable and may be messy, and prepare yourself and your loved ones to ride the hard times through. For starters, study up on whatever ails you, take a first-aid course, look into herbology and find people with expertise on local plants. (The author recently found an otherwise obnoxious weed helps alleviate electrosensitive symptoms greatly: yellow dock.) Also, be aware that the "collapse" may prove to be a grindingly slow intensification of our current misery, with all the vested interests digging in their heels. That may mean a lot of good ideas will be brought forth only to be outlawed. Keep everything you do on your own for your health under the radar.
(4) As censorship accelerates, it will become harder to locate reliable sources of information on alternative health. Subscribing directly to their newsletters will help you stay in touch with them unless the day comes that they are completely eliminated from the Internet. I recommend Dr. Joseph Mercola and Sayer Ji (and there are many more) who have both amassed vast amounts of useful research reports and other data that one can search to get a handle on any health problems that arise and at the very least approach conventional healthcare from an informed perspective.
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