The Devastating Truth About the Obama Plan for Alternative Medicine Practitioners

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roy Hunter on January 29, 2010 at 10:01pm

Hi Kathleen,

Although I do my best to avoid political discussions with hypnotherapists, I must say that my wife spent almost three decades as a professional in the health insurance industry.

Her opinion is that the Obama Plan will destroy the health care industry and hurt the middle class as well as older people who are already on Medicare; and constitutes a government takeover of health care. Furthermore, it may very well involve rationing of health care for retired people, as well as a reduction of benefits for many taxpayers...particularly those past retirement age.

I believe that her opinion is very credible, backed up by almost 30 years of experience: Whether you are democrat, republican, or independent, do not let our government take over the health insurance industry.

Contact your senator or representative and ask that they scrap the current Obama plan and start from scratch. One of the best ways of reducing the cost of health insurance would be to let insurance companies compete across state lines.

Note: I will make no responses to any political postings. You should be concerned about the above regardless of your political affiliation.

Roy Hunter

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Permalink Reply by Jill Semonin PhD- CHt on January 30, 2010 at 9:06am

I heard that this "Health Plan" wasn't going to be used by the President himself or those employed by the government. Why? I would think if it's good enough for everyone else, it's good enough for him and all government personnel.

That alone sent a red flag in my belly right from the get go. I am also not into politics and avoid choosing sides.

I currently have private insurance and I would like to keep mine the way it is. Everything I have read so far about this issue scares the crap out of me for our future and my parents future.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on January 30, 2010 at 9:24am

Hi,

Back in the days of RedFlagsWeekly.com Dr Tenpenny and I were featured writers on health related issues. I have always thought Dr Tenpenny was an exceptional health educator and social activist.

I agree with Dr T. and Roy's wife the Obama Plan will hurt us and our loved ones as citizens and it will also limit our practices as adjunct or alternative health care providers--

Fight the plan - speak up and out --

Thanks for posting Kathleen.

Michael E.

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Permalink Reply by Pete & Lorraine on January 30, 2010 at 12:45pm

Thanks for that Kathleen.
I was sent an email via one of the hypnotherapy schools, in April 2007, I imagine most of you in the states have already seen this, I have taken out the email addresses,reading your posting reminded me. when I first watched the video I wondered how accurate it may be, recently we had a first ad by the Food Standards Agency which is apparently attached to CODEX advertising about saturated fat. We recently had a petition to continue to allow the vitamins and supplements sales to remain in health food shops as opposed to being prescribed by doctors. I find it worrying to think our choice of health and lively hood could possibly be taken from us by drug and chemical companies in the name of greed via politicians. What ever your opinion it makes you wonder!!!!!!!!!!!


This message is being sent to every member of the American Board of NLP, the
Time Line TherapyT Association, the American Board of Hypnotherapy along
with everyone associated with NLPWeekly.com. Together this is the strength
of 50,000 voices.

These companies and organizations have come together in a time of change to
inform you about something that you need to pay attention to, now. This is
a time sensitive e-mail so please take the next few minutes to read it.

The FDA in the US has proposed to regulate alternative therapies including
vitamins and possibly hypnosis as medical devices or treatments. That means
that vitamins and minerals above the Recommended Daily Allowance will be
unavailable, and Hypnosis could be illegal to practice unless you are a
Medical Doctor. Other alternative therapies will become illegal too.
To read more see:

www.newstarget.com/021789.html

The article above will describe in detail what is going on, how it will
affect you directly and what you can do about it! Make sure that you click
on the direct link to the FDA's comment posting page before April 30th.

This quote is from the article above: "The FDA is accepting public comments
on the docket until April 30th. They tried to sneak this under the radar,
but word got out and now the natural health community is up in arms over
this rule. If you wish to protect your access to nutritional supplements,
herbs, essential oils, homeopathic medicine or any other "complementary" or
"alternative" modality, it is crucial that you take action to post your
comments with the FDA right now and write your representatives in Washington
to put a stop to this outrageous effort to destroy natural medicine. (And be
sure to really write them. Just sending an email has virtually no impact
compared to writing a physical letter in your own words.)"

I am sure that many of you have also heard of the world-wide vitamin and
mineral changes being made and understand its implications on our health
globally. However, what we have just found out is that we have the next 10
days to have our voice heard on this matter.

If you are unfamiliar with this subject please understand that this may
sound bizarre. We are essentially talking about a ruling or treaty that if
passed will make illegal globally all vitamins, minerals, herbs (even herbs
grown in your garden) along with ALL other natural, alternative and
complementary therapies. This is not only going to affect your personal
health, but it will also affect your career as a hypnotherapist or if you
are involved in any other form of complementary practice.

For more information on the implications of this treaty please click here:

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/features/codex_wto.html

www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

This is a video that gives you a deep understanding of what we are up
against and what we can do to stop it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634&q=...

Whether you are or are not an American citizen you still need to act now.
Go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and see what you can do to object to these
changes in your country. Also, please forward this to everyone you know.
Together they can't ignore our voices!

Act now to keep your freedom!

Thank you,

NLPweely.com

American Board of NLP

American Board of Hypnotherapy

Time Line TherapyT Association

This is the present site below.

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org

Pete

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Permalink Reply by Jan Krüger on January 30, 2010 at 3:31pm

It doesn't really concern me that much since I live in a country that has had public health insurance for decades, but I wouldn't trust anyone with any level of experience in anything to tell me whether any one health care system is better than another.

That said, there is one glaring stupidity in the article that I'd like to point out. I quote:

"Annually, 36 million serious adverse reactions to those drugs occur. So, inclusive health coverage for many more Americans under the Obama Plan—with business as usual—means these horrendous figures will rise."

Please read this very carefully. The message is: "health care makes bad mistakes. Inclusive health care means more treatments and hence more mistakes." That's what it says, isn't it?
What else does more treatments imply? How about "more successes"? Obviously, health care produces a vastly higher number of cured people than dead or seriously injured ones. So let's focus on the smaller increase of mistakes and completely ignore the much larger increase of people with improved health, right? And it's completely unlikely that more diagnostic check-ups and more treatments would actually reduce the number of deaths due to the two most common causes of death (heart diseases and cancer), isn't it? Yeah, so this argument, which is hailed as the central weakness of inclusive health care, is very convincing indeed. Isn't it positively hypnotic how the author breaks it down into a simple "us vs. them" scenario? Whoever supports inclusive health care supports people dying. Hooray! My world is getting simpler by the minute. I can probably stop thinking by tomorrow.

As for the rest of the article, I don't disagree outright with the general direction, but I think there's a lot of paranoia involved in it. I'm not aware of any developed country with public health insurance that has the kinds of extreme consequences that the author envisions. I would probably prefer a slightly different system, but I really don't want to get into a huge discussion about the technicalities of health care systems. None of us know enough about it to be able to do more than throw random unsubstantiated prophecies at each other.

PS. Another quote, definitely comedy gold: "it will be very convenient to declare new pandemics every few seasons, because these phony non-epidemics provide an opportunity to herd the sheep into clinics and remind them who is running the show."

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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Hanover on January 30, 2010 at 4:14pm

Hi Jan,

I don't want to get into a debate either. I would just point out a common fallacy--in the U.S., lack of health insurance does not equal lack of health care. All hospitals are required by law to provide emergency treatment to anyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay. Most physicians offer discounts for cash payment. Walk-in clinics in WalMart and drugstore chains offer care for $45 a visit, and common prescription drugs are $4.

There is no health insurance crisis in the U.S. There is no healthcare crisis in the U.S. Anyone who claims there is, has an agenda that has nothing to do with providing better care (or better health) for more people.

Pro-socialized-medicine activists claim there are 50 million people without health insurance in the U.S. (a number that includes at least 13 million illegal aliens). The pro-socialized-medicine people claim that they can start treating all 50 million of these people for free, with no impact on quality of care, waiting times, etc. Yes, they think we're that stupid. (And of course, their assumption is that none of these people get healthcare now, which is not true.)

I'm only opposed to socialized medicine for two reasons: it's immoral to extort money from the people who earned it to give to people who didn't, and socialized medicine doesn't work as well as free-market medicine (which, for the record, we haven't had in the U.S. for decades).

Kathleen Hanover
"The Pretty Goodest Public Relations, 
Copywriting & Marketing Lady on the Planet"

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Permalink Reply by Roman Buchok on January 30, 2010 at 7:47pm

You mean live and let die. There are plenty of ways to live the American Dream and still take care of the health needs (and educational needs) for all citizens. It's got nothing to do with politics or economics - its called basic compassion and human decency. I am proud that a portion of my taxes got to insure that ALL citizens of my country are properly and adequately taken care of.

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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Hanover on January 30, 2010 at 8:19pm

Roman, help me understand.

What I don't understand about your definitions of decency and compassion is that neither can be accomplished without the use of deadly force. It is with deadly force that the earnings of some "equal" citizens are forcefully confiscated to be distributed to other "more equal" citizens (after wasting more than half the money on graft, corruption, bloated administration costs, etc.)

Help me understand how that is decent or compassionate for the people whose earnings you're confiscating at gunpoint. (Let's be real...not paying those taxes you love so much means, eventually, a trip to prison in the company of armed law enforcement agents.)

If you want to help people, I wonder why you wouldn't want to just do it yourself, and let other people make their own decisions? Why do you need a government to be your "enforcer?" Why do you want to inflict your will on other people? How is that decent or compassionate?

I'm not being sarcastic--I'm being completely serious. Please help me understand how "decency" and "compassion" can be accomplished by threatening to put people in prison if they don't agree with your plans for their money? That is, ultimately, what you're advocating here.

Kathleen Hanover
"The Pretty Goodest Public Relations, 
Copywriting & Marketing Lady on the Planet"

Roman Buchok said:

You mean live and let die. There are plenty of ways to live the American Dream and still take care of the health needs (and educational needs) for all citizens. It's got nothing to do with politics or economics - its called basic compassion and human decency. I am proud that a portion of my taxes got to insure that ALL citizens of my country are properly and adequately taken care of.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Lockman on January 30, 2010 at 8:23pm

It makes you wonder that George Orwell and his book "1984" wasn't a psychic vision of the future.

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Permalink Reply by Sharon Stiles on January 31, 2010 at 2:35am

I live in the UK and have grown up with a "free" health system - the NHS. It has its good and bad points but surely a system where cost is not a barrier to health care is a good thing.

One of the bad things about our system is that complementary health isn't widely available through the NHS but that is slowly changing - admittedly too slowly for a lot of us. I am keen for complementary health to be funded by the NHS because I'm sure that a lot more clients would be able to afford to come to see me. (I suppose this is a case where cost is a barrier to health care at the moment.) Homeopathy has been available for many years, despite a split in doctors' opinions over it. Acupuncture, osteopathy and chirpractice are now available by referral. Cognitive behaviour therapy is now the recommended initial treatment for depression and anxiety. Hypnotherapy is recommended for IBS.

That doesn't mean those treatments are readily available or even that doctors readily recommend them. But, medication is not always foisted onto an unwilling patient. It is often the patients who ask for medication because they are unaware of other treatments and think medication is a quick fix. Education is obviously needed.

At a basic level it is often the people who are least able to pay who need the most healthcare. Using taxation to pay for healthcare is surely a good way of ensuring that there is care for people who can't afford it. Whilst I grumble about taxes as much as anyone I am actually more than happy to fund the NHS even if I don't need it.

Before the NHS was introduced there were many poorer families who couldn't afford to visit the doctor and so their health suffered. Often it was women who suffered most because money was spent first on the husband who could least afford to be ill as he brought the money into the home and then on the children.

The problem with people paying for their own insurance is that when money gets tight there is a danger they will cut back on their insurance. Last year we had severe flooding and some people not only had the disruption of having their homes flooded and their posessions ruined but they were unable to replace them because they hadn't been able to afford insurance on their home contents. So peole who were already in financial difficulty fell even further into it.

Just because we have healthcare run by the country doesn't mean that the patient has to do everything the doctor says. There are peole who refuse some treatment or who pay privately for their own treatment. It's not a perfect system but no system that is focused on care that is restricted by money is likely to be perfect.

As there are many countries with healthcare funded through taxation it would be interesting to see how successful a new government funded healthcare system would be that could learn from mistakes made by the existing ones. A new system would be starting in a very different world with more technology and knowledge than the existing ones started in.

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Permalink Reply by Jan Krüger on January 31, 2010 at 4:48am

Kathleen Hanover said:

in the U.S., lack of health insurance does not equal lack of health care. All hospitals are required by law to provide emergency treatment to anyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay.

That's a valid point, and I won't claim I'm extremely well-informed about the US system. Still, lack of health insurance is a major deterrent against getting less than urgent treatment, e.g. routine check-ups or treatment of conditions that carry a risk of becoming chronic. Public health insurance over here frequently rewards getting regular check-ups (e.g. once a year in dental care for adults) with increased shares of payment for certain kinds of treatments.

There is no healthcare crisis in the U.S. Anyone who claims there is, has an agenda that has nothing to do with providing better care (or better health) for more people.

It's a bold claim that you know the agenda of other people. The formatting is fitting, I guess. ;)

Make no mistake, I'm no friend of anyone who vehemently argues for something even beyond the confines of rationality... but the number of followers of a public health system is too large, in my opinion, to summarily dismiss the general idea. Perhaps the plan needs a healthy dose of refinements, but there is simply no evidence that nothing of the sort can possibly improve anything.

it's immoral to extort money from the people who earned it to give to people who didn't

But that's the way societies work: some share of everyone's achievements is used to benefit the society as a whole. The question isn't so much how many people get benefits that they don't actually deserve; it's whether the benefits have advantages for the system as a whole... and it's very, very difficult to say anything about that. Large social systems are so complex that they defy any decent level of predictability.

The solution, in my opinion, must be open discourse rather than dismissal of any side. In that vein, it'll be interesting to see how liquid democracy plays out.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Buchok on January 31, 2010 at 5:56am

I stand by my comments as obvious and self evident. Best of luck to you and your country.

Kathleen Hanover said:

Roman, help me understand.

What I don't understand about your definitions of decency and compassion is that neither can be accomplished without the use of deadly force. It is with deadly force that the earnings of some "equal" citizens are forcefully confiscated to be distributed to other "more equal" citizens (after wasting more than half the money on graft, corruption, bloated administration costs, etc.)

Help me understand how that is decent or compassionate for the people whose earnings you're confiscating at gunpoint. (Let's be real...not paying those taxes you love so much means, eventually, a trip to prison in the company of armed law enforcement agents.)

If you want to help people, I wonder why you wouldn't want to just do it yourself, and let other people make their own decisions? Why do you need a government to be your "enforcer?" Why do you want to inflict your will on other people? How is that decent or compassionate?

I'm not being sarcastic--I'm being completely serious. Please help me understand how "decency" and "compassion" can be accomplished by threatening to put people in prison if they don't agree with your plans for their money? That is, ultimately, what you're advocating here.

Kathleen Hanover
"The Pretty Goodest Public Relations, 
Copywriting & Marketing Lady on the Planet"

Roman Buchok said:

You mean live and let die. There are plenty of ways to live the American Dream and still take care of the health needs (and educational needs) for all citizens. It's got nothing to do with politics or economics - its called basic compassion and human decency. I am proud that a portion of my taxes got to insure that ALL citizens of my country are properly and adequately taken care of.

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