Monthly Archives: March 2017

Failure of the US to Protect Citizen’s Health

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Ill

It was March 2010 and I had just come home to have lunch.  I flipped on the TV and there was Sander Levin, acting Chair of the US Ways and Means Committee after Charles Rangel had stepped aside during his entanglement with the House Ethics Committee. President Obama was in the process of signing the Affordable Health Care.  Obama had asked the Ways and Means Committee to once again to review the economics of the bill.  A reporter stuck his microphone into the face of Levin, “Have you considered universal healthcare?”  Without pause, Levin responded, “I don’t think that the US Economy could handle the loss of five million jobs.” He snapped around, in military fashion, and marched away.

The loss of jobs comment startled me.  What jobs was he referring to? That is when I started to research how health payments were made in the US.  Most Americans don’t have a clue about the economics of healthcare and I certainly didn’t.  It turns out that he was referring to health insurance jobs.  Here is Trump’s dilemma in trying to appeal Obamacare.  The loss of jobs versus providing a health plan for Americans that they can afford and that will not crash the economy. Consider that healthcare accounts for almost twenty percent of the US economy.

Nancy Pelosi’s comment about eighty-five percent of insurance payments going toward health treatment is just a big fat lie.  No insurance company or any other business for that matter could stay afloat if it had to pay out eighty-five percent of its income for external cost.  The real number for the percentage of payment for treatment and pharmaceutical cost is close to fifty-five according to a Yale social economist. In other words, for every dollar that you give to an insurance company, only fifty-five cents is paid to providers and pharmaceuticals.

The health insurance business then falls into the category of a protection racket. The mob comes into your place of business and asks for twenty percent of your sales so that you will not have any break-ins. Compare:  Give me twenty percent of your GDP and I’ll assure that you get health treatment.  All of this with the protection of the US Congress.  How many of you would like to have Congress tell your clients that they must buy your product?  How many of you would like to have a monopoly in a state for your product?  Only health insurance and Major League Baseball have monopolies.

Health insurance allows you to be “ill at ease.”

How did we get into this mess? It is a long and boring story of government treating its citizens like cows to be harvested for income.  Consider that a cow has its greatest value when it reaches its maximum weight.  Just like cows, we have our largest value to insurance companies when we reach end-of-life health cost at our maturity. Most people think that health cost is bad for insurance companies.  It is just the opposite.  The larger cost of healthcare means a larger amount of sales for insurance companies. I had the opportunity to play golf with a CEO of a large health insurance company.  I said to him, “I had about eighty thousand dollars in health insurance payments for treatment of my back pain over the last decade.  Does that mean you had about one hundred sixty thousand in sales to cover that cost?”  He replied in the affirmative. My research numbers were confirmed.

Manufacturing jobs build wealth.  Insurance jobs are not service jobs and do not build wealth.  It only takes away from the wellbeing of the population long term, just like other protection rackets.  Government has sent our manufacturing jobs elsewhere while replacing them with insurance jobs.  If we do go to universal healthcare quickly, we would plunge the economy into recession, if not economic depression. This is the present dilemma for Congress as they try to determine what to do with the failed Obamacare.  How would you replace five to eight million health insurance jobs (The number of health insurance jobs have grown under Obamacare which was the intention of the bill)?  Other economically similar countries all have universal healthcare that was started in the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson threw us into an economic storm with his “Great Society.”  Universal healthcare is why countries like Canada have healthcare cost that are almost half of what it is in the US—no health insurance jobs.

“Bernie Sanders, firmly for universal health coverage, goes into a bar at a large hotel that is filled with insurance agents there for a convention.  Hoping to create as many problems as possible he yells; insurance agents are all crooks.  If you have a problem, just come up here right now.  A man came up and stuck a finger in Sanders’ face and told him to take it back.  Sanders asked him if he was an insurance agent.  The man replied, no I’m a crook.”

I am firmly a capitalist, but there are some things that I don’t think the large invisible hand of Adam Smith should be allowed to control.  That is anything that does not build wealth or health.  Health insurance and other protection rackets fall into this category.  We have had our freedom of life and pursuit of happiness taken away from us for our Government’s version of security.  We have neither. Sustaining institutions at the cost of the individuals they serve is evil (M. Scott Peck, “People of the Lie”).  Maintenance and growth of a large market is necessary for continued business growth.  With health insurance, the sicker the population, the better for business.  Government has colluded with health insurance companies through campaign contributions to pass laws and manipulate agencies under HHS to assure this happens.  HHS’s moto is “Markets before Mandates.”  Just consider now that we know through science that there would be one thousand less deaths a day the US through the elimination of vitamin D deficiency. This is to say nothing about the significant reduction in chronic disease.  Government has not acted because a reduction in this significant portion of GDP would send us into recession.

There is a way out, but media outlets must start telling the truth. The reason that they do not is because advertising is how they maintain income.  If they embarrass their health sector advertisers, business would be bad.  Our free press is necessary for our version of government to work.  The first thing that should happen is to set term limits for congressmen. If congressman acted for the people they represent instead of maintaining institutions, a lot of the ethics and moral issues would be resolved.  As congressmen vote for the people, then news stories would have to explain why, regardless of what their advertisers thought.

A survey was just recently published that put US life expectancy (an indicator of health) at 34th.  This is a result of manipulating science and economic forces to sustain the US economy at the cost of the health of its citizens.  In addition, there is moral decay because of all the pain citizens are suffering.  If we pay twice as much for health as any other country, why do we not have the best health in the world?  Evil . . . —Pandemic Survivor

Improved Longevity with Metadichol

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Life Ext

Scientist at ETH Zurich and the Jena Hospital in Germany completed a study of over 40,000 genes and identified 30 that allowed for extended life span in worms, fish, and mice. Many of the genes extended life span by around 5%, but there was one gene that extended life by up to 25%: BCAT1.  Here’s the story.  It has long been a quest for humankind to extend life.  Here is a story of the Ponce de Leon’s of our era. There are several compounds that have been identified that impact the BACT1 gene.  A study is ongoing for the popular diabetes drug, Metformin, to extend life. To clarify, the BACT1 gene is responsible for catabolism of branched chain amino acids (BCAA).

When Metadichol (a nano version of policosanol) was compared to gabapentin and policosanol it was found to be 3000 times more effective than gabapentin in its impact on the BCAT1 gene.  Here is a link (pdf) to the paper “Improving Longevity with Metadichol by Inhibiting the BCAT1 Gene” for download Metadichol-BCAT1-paper .

It seems that the truth of extending life lies in the idea of having the least number of illnesses during your life.  I wrote an article about this some six years prior:  Filling Good, Looking Better.  In my reading, I think I came across this idea from Linus Pauling during the 70s in his book, “How to Live Longer and Feel Better.” Ideally, it is not just about extending life, the best solution is to have a healthy, vibrant life. Pauling promoted many ideas about how to be healthy (and by-the-way won two Nobel Prizes).  His largest push that he is remembered for is vitamin C.  His promotion of vitamin C has now been supported by modern research. However, he also promoted healthy eating and the reduction of sugar consumption, now a very modern idea.  He even did a study on prisoners to show that it was sugar and not fat that drove up cholesterol.  Long life by reducing disease appears to be the case for BCAAs as they impact your health on many levels.

The idea of extending life by reducing disease gets exciting when considering Metadichol. It appears to reduce disease on many different levels that just happen to include the metabolism of BCAA. Here are the many articles that I have written about Metadichol.  The beauty of Metadichol is that it is a food substance and not a drug and has no known side effects.

The idea is not to just extend your life span, it is to have a happy, healthy, and vibrant life.  To accomplish this: It is about understanding your emotions and living in flow; it is about eating a healthy diet that eliminates flour, sugar, and other processed foods; it is about getting adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals that are much higher than the RDAs of our government; it is about eliminating environmental toxins like nicotine, mercury, and the salt substitute MSG; and it is about eliminating the side effects from prescription drugs (In other words, stay healthy and don’t take prescription drugs).  To your healthy life that will allow you to live to 120 years old. –Pandemic Survivor 

LED Blue Light’s Cumulative Effect

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Damage to the eyes has a cumulative effect from light exposure. This has been demonstrated in the modern error by airplane pilots. After years of high altitude flight, it is not unusual for pilots to have eye damage. With constant exposure to welding arcs, eye damage to welders is also a concern. As we age, phototoxic exposure incidences accumulate.  Ultra-violet (UV) light damages the front of the eye and blue light damages the back of the eye.  The reason many of the names of eye diseases have the word age in them, like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is from the cumulative effect over time.  Phototoxicity has several components: intensity, wavelength, and accumulated exposure.  One event of looking at an arc welder or one time in a tanning bed without any eye protection can be very damaging to the eyes. horse

Long term exposure to any toxicity can be damaging to health. Too much fluorine in the water over time, eating too much sugar and flour, drinking too much alcohol, not wearing your seat belt, teasing the neighbors pit bull, and other seemingly innocent behaviors will kill you given enough exposure. It is the identification of the exposure and risk versus reward that is difficult.  In the case of LEDs, there is such an advantage of power consumption; the people with control to make societal changes took the risk. After several decades of exposure to the Trojan Horse emitter of blue light, phototoxicity will eventually take your vision. The eye docs will tell you that it is just old age.  They have not considered the risk with the introduction of the pale blue horse. It is such a great thing to reduce power consumption and save you from sea level rise as the planet warms.  I say this is that stinky stuff falling out the back of the horse and money is king. 

It turns out that we have known about the dangers of too much exposure to blue light since the 1960s. Of course, we have known about too much exposure to UV light for much longer.  The electromagnetic spectrum is so interesting.  All the way from gamma-ray radiation to long radio waves for communication, the spectrum provides us many opportunities.  If you want to know more about light, I would suggest this lengthy article, Blue Light and Health. (You should just ignore his recipe of making blue blockers, but if you have the skill, enjoy.) Light is everywhere and does not appear to be an immediate threat, so just ignore the dangers, and ride the pale blue horse. After all, the LED has reduced the lighting cost of your monthly electric bill by ninety percent.  Surely that is worth the risk of blindness.  Our leaders seem to think that the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to prevent sea level rise is more important than your eye sight. 

There are computer screens, cell phones, TVs, street lights, and now our general house lighting; all provides us with exposure to high energy blue light.  You should note here that many cities have reduced the amount of new LED street lights because it was affecting the sleep of its residents. Only by controlling your exposure will you be successful in protecting your eyes.  Of course, the simple thing to do is to wear blue blockers when inside.  However, with no blue light or too much blue light at the correct times of day, you may upset your circadian rhythms because of the lack of or over production of melatonin.  –Pandemic Survivor

Other Articles on Blue Light and Eye Damage (You must make up your own mind. When huge economic advantages are involved; individual health takes a back seat.)

Review of Optometry—The Low Down on Blue Light  https://www.reviewofoptometry.com/ce/the-lowdown-on-blue-light-good-vs-bad-and-its-connection-to-amd-109744
Prevent Blindness—Blue Light and Your Eyes  http://www.preventblindness.org/blue-light-and-your-eyes
Blue Light Exposed  http://www.bluelightexposed.com/#blue-light-and-macular-degeneration
UAB News—Debunking Digital Eyestrain and Blue Light Myths (of course, a university professor’s take) https://www.uab.edu/news/youcanuse/item/7258-debunking-digital-eyestrain-and-blue-light-myths