posted by jim | March 11, 2010

Let’s Deconstruct Healthcare Opposition for a moment-

“Americans are happy with their healthcare”-This a phrase meant to induce amnesia. The goal is that EVERYONE should have healthcare and this ditty is meant to make those who have insurance feel insecure about healthcare change. It dismisses people who don’t have insurance.

The Government Takeover of Healthcare-
This talking point goes something like this: “It’s a government takeover. Government isn’t responsive to anybody.”
Remember Drive by Births. That great idea came from insurance companies that pregnant moms would go to the hospital, give birth, and mom and infant would leave the next day. Reducing hospital stays decreases costs and increases profit. You might call that rationing health care to boost income. It was public outcry and government action that changed this. Death panels usually come up about this time, but the other side uses the terms “end of life decisions.” And that really is about you making the decisions. I mean which side is for Choice, here, anyway?

Healthcare Money is NOT a Corporate Right-
“It’s a Government takeover of 1/6th of the economy” or “A public option is Socialism”. I suppose 1/6th of the economy (or whatever the actual number) is meant to give you a sense of a Government of monstrous proportion. Socialism…well, let’s look at what we’ve got. Free market healthcare? Well, let’s assume we have something close to that. The goal of markets is to maximize profits not give everyone healthcare. Now we must say, here, that there are principled people (particularly Libertarians) who do not aspire to cover everyone. We must agree to disagree on this point for the moment because I am only addressing the many healthcare opposers who believe that the free market is the American way to go. You know those folks who want to legislate the markets into covering more people even though the market approach is to funnel people into particular demographics where they can pick and choose. The real despots here are those who say that people can’t organize and form their own market (that was called the public option), a market of people called Americans; your friends and neighbors, aunts and uncles, sons and daughter, but also anybody-anybody you may not like. That may be the rub for some people-not all.
This position is characterized by Senator Orrin Hatch: “Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it. The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty.” This consistently Libertarian statement from someone who is not a Libertarian is just puffery. These are the vultures who leaves the working poor (and those without work) to go without healthcare by limiting our choice to just markets.
To me it is inconsequential whether you believe in markets or you believe markets are greedy. Markets simply refuse (and are unable) to provide for the General Healthcare of our nation. Markets won’t go away when Americans have a right to create their own health care public option.

Corporations-
There are people who believe corporations are legal creations that provide elite privilege to a few and there are others (like the Supreme Court) who believe that corporations are just a collection of individuals. But there is another phenomena of corporations that creates a feudal wall in our society. The employees inside a corporation get favorable benefits, flexible spending plans, 401k matches, and maybe…a pension contribution. It is not generally recognized that law not markets force corporations to distribute these benefits somewhat equally (that’s a serious distortion of the word equal, I might add, most of the benefits go to a few within the company). The average employee may not be impressed by these benefits and their tax savings but they are unimaginable to working people who work in small industry and the working poor. But these people, who are more likely to vote, are essentially bought out of any interest in making political changes in healthcare for anyone else. In fact, talk of change makes them susceptible to political fear tactics. A public option would be a considerable weapon in weakening the power and privilege of corporations.

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Tags: Donkey party get off your asses, Healthcare, healthcare protest

posted by jim | September 13, 2009

“Basically, I think, the heckler fears his opponent. He thinks that the opponent’s ideas are a ‘clear and present danger,’ as it were, and they must be drowned out before they seduce anyone. You generally know when you have trodden upon somebody’s deepest prejudices because their civility deserts them and they begin interrupting excitedly and adopting a ‘heckler’ persona.”

Robert Anton Wilson, Natural Law: or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy.

via Wilson Says He Won’t Apologize Again – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com.

Category: Body Health, Body Health DIY, Community & Mutual Aid, Do It Ourselves Health, Health, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: heckler, Joe Wilson, Robert

posted by jim | August 24, 2009

Photo by rottenlittlerobin; some rights reserved.
I’ve been coveting a rain barrel for a while now, but my money has been going to other priorities. When my wheel barrel filled with water from an early summer downpour, I was reluctant to dump it. I knew mosquito larvae would soon show up if I let it stand, but I also wanted to save the water for my soon to be thirsty plants. That’s when I recollected a friend of mine who grew up in Sri Lanka who had told me that Beta fish occur naturally in puddles all over his former country. It occurred to me that Beta fish may like to eat mosquito larvae. So my poor man’s rain barrel was born. My kids love to watch our Beta gobble mosquito larvae (up to 50 in 15 minutes) and I do too.
Keep the water in the shade. Betas will tolerate mucky (and even green) water. If your neighbor with the pool has been foreclosed upon, don’t try to poison the larvae just toss a Beta in the pool. My Beta has survived for 3 months now on mosquito larvae alone. The beauty of using beta fish is that unlike Bacillus sphaericus and Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis mosquitos won’t evolve a tolerance to them. Betas cost about $2 per fish.

Category: Body Health DIY, DIY Food, Food, Health | No Comments »
Tags: beta fish, mosquito, rain barrel, water conservation

posted by jim | August 14, 2009

photo by Mike Licht, some rights reserved.
With Sarah Palin working on the issue, can universal health coverage be far behind? Perhaps Sarah Palin’s Death Panel will look something like this. Please see Mike Licht’s creative montage at his flickr site. So this is why Paula Abdul quit Idol!
Here are the facts:
1. The U.S. does not have the finest health care coverage in the world. It’s not even in the top 10. It is not even in the top 20. Don’t trust me. Look it up.
2. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than all first world countries and has worse results.
3. Countries with national coverage spend less per person than our current system AND they have better results.

Universal insurance is as much an Enlightenment idea as any notion of socialism. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and their friend the Marquis de Condorcet-perhaps the most utopian of them all-wrote about the use of social insurance. Here is Thomas Malthus criticizing Condorcet:

“By the application of calculations to the probablilities of life and the interest of money, he proposes that a fund should be established which should assure to the old an assistance, produced, in part, by their own former savings, and, in part, by the savings of individuals who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the benefit of it. The same, or a similar fund, should give assistance to women and children who lose their husbands, or fathers…”

Sounds a lot like our modern Social Security to me. Viva la Classical Liberalism!

Category: Body Health DIY, Community & Mutual Aid, DIY Community & Mutual Aid, Do It Ourselves Health, Health, Mental Health DIY, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: death panel, Death Panels, Healthcare, Paula Abdul, Sarah Palin

posted by jim | May 4, 2009

 

I recently saw an ophthalmologist for the fuzzy vision in my right eye. He diagnosed me with amblyopia, or commonly, lazy eye. When I asked him what I should do, he replied, “Nothing. If you were 6 years old, we would cover your good eye with a patch and force your lazy eye to re-learn what it is forgetting.” He said very little more outside of “if on the odd chance that you should lose sight in your good eye, your other eye would compensate.” I didn’t quite realize all that he was telling me until I had done my own research. My left eye had better vision than my right and my right eye had gotten lazy-letting my left do the work. My brain where my right eye communicated the world didn’t have to work as hard-it was a bad student and wasn’t getting the practice it should: I was losing vision in my right eye, perhaps my depth perception.
My ophthalmologist had left out a lot: but I found all this very interesting. I had recently read Sharon Begley’s Train Your Mind; Change Your Brain. She explored the notion that the human brain is much more plastic than has been commonly conceived. In regards to amblyopia, the common wisdom was if it wasn’t treated by six-you couldn’t treat it. That has already started to change suggesting kids can benefit from treatment up until age 14.
I began to wonder if treatment might be possible for us old dogs, as well, based on the idea that the brain is more plastic than commonly conceived. Sure enough I heard this story on NPR relating how research was offering hope for adults with amblyopia.
Intimations that mind and body are at least on speaking terms.
 

photo by brain blogger; some rights reserved.

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Tags: amblyopia, brain plasticity, mind/body, mindfulness, Sharon Begley

posted by jim | April 30, 2009

Bleach is not considered green, but used judiciously it needn’t be considered a reason to turn in your green card. My first encounter with using bleach as an antibiotic was when I scraped the top of my foot on barnacles in Portugal. I was traveling and though it hurt pretty bad I didn’t treat it. I wound up with a nasty infection. A family I was staying with put my foot in a pail and added a touch of bleach. I was a bit taken aback, but the treatment worked impressively well. It was only later that I remembered bleach was recommended to clean needles for HIV infected drug users that I appreciated its antibacterial qualities.
Now a study recommends bleach baths (only minor amounts of bleach) for pediatric sufferers (I don’t see why it wouldn’t help adult sufferers, as well). Take a look. It’s minor cost and big payoff makes it an important addition to the utopian medicine cabinet. It also reduces the need for antibiotics and perhaps reducing the spread of MRSA. 

photo by Care SMC; some rights reserved.

 

CHICAGO— It’s best known for whitening a load of laundry. But now simple household bleach has a surprising new role: an effective treatment for kids’ chronic eczema.
Chronic, severe eczema can mar a childhood. The skin disorder starts with red, itchy, inflamed skin that often becomes crusty and raw from scratching. The eczema disturbs kids’ sleep, alters their appearance and affects their concentration in school. The itching is so bad kids may break the skin from scratching and get chronic skin infections that are difficult to treat, especially from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have discovered powerful relief in the form of diluted beach baths. It’s a cheap, simple and safe treatment that drastically improves the rash as well as reduces flare-ups of eczema, which affects 17 percent of school-age children.

The study found giving pediatric patients with moderate or severe eczema (atopic dermatitis) diluted bleach baths decreased signs of infection and improved the severity and extent of the eczema on their bodies. That translates into less scratching, fewer infections and a higher quality of life for these children.

The typical treatment of oral and topical antibiotics increases the risk of bacterial resistance, something doctors try to avoid, especially in children. Bleach kills the bacteria but doesn’t have the same risk of creating bacterial resistance.

Patients on the bleach baths had a reduction in eczema severity that was five times greater than those treated with placebos over one to three months, said Amy S. Paller, M.D., the Walter J. Hamlin Professor and chair of dermatology, and professor of pediatrics, at the Feinberg School. Paller also is an attending physician at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

The study will be published in the journal Pediatrics April 27.
(more…)

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posted by jim | April 17, 2009

I hope to stress Synergies as an important tool in the Utopian Toolbox. Ernest Callenbach the author of two Ecological Utopias: Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging, discusses his idea of what he calls the The Green Triangle from his still relevant 1997 article in the quarterly In Context.

“The three points of the triangle are:

The principle that relates these three points is: Anytime you do something beneficial for one of them, you will almost inevitably also do something beneficial for the other two – whether you’re hoping to or not.

For example, let’s suppose you decide to take a step to improve your health, like eating less fatty meat and dairy products. This will of course decrease your chance of circulatory disease; it may even make you stronger and give you greater endurance. But, since meat and dairy products are relatively expensive, you will save quite a bit of money; moreover, you will also help the environment – since meat production is a very land-intensive and damaging use of our farm resources.

But the interesting thing is that you can start at any point of the triangle. Thus, let’s assume you do something beneficial for the environment, like walking or bicycling instead of driving your car. You cut down pollution emissions, you reduce smog and lung damage, you decrease acid rain, and you may postpone the greenhouse effect. But you’ll help your health because you get more regular exercise, and you’ll also save money on gas, oil, and car depreciation.

Some people are skeptical about good things stemming from thrift, which is an American virtue that has gone out of style temporarily in the well-to-do layers of our society, but the third point of the triangle is actually just as potent. Anytime you do something beneficial for your pocketbook, like not buying an expensive gizmo whose manufacturing expends a lot of energy and uses a lot of raw materials, or taking an expensive trip that turns a lot of petroleum into atmospheric pollution and noise, you’re also helping the Earth. But you’re probably also doing your health a favor since you’re less stressed out to earn the money to pay off the gizmo or trip; and not pouring a lot of emotional energy into interacting with the gizmo leaves time and attention for other human beings and the kind of spontaneous improvisation and fooling around that our species evolved to be good at.

If you apply the Green Triangle to your everyday life, examples of delightful synergistic effects can be found everywhere; you come out with many delightful new perceptions. Some cases: Low- or no-cost fun with other people is almost always more ecologically and financially benign than hard work and heavy consumption; evidently evolution did not commit an ecological error in making us playful. (Making us willing to live by clocks is another story.) Exchanges outside the cash economy – trading massages, for instance – don’t have monetary ramifications you have to worry about, whereas if you pay for a massage, the money may go into a bank, and you know what they do with it. Growing or making your own is usually cheaper and healthier, as well as more ecologically benign. Fun, isn’t it? So go triangulate!”@ Ernest Callenbach – The Green Triangle via In Context

Category: Health, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: Ernest Callenbach, Food, Green Triangle, Health, synergies, Transportation, utopian toolbox

posted by jim | April 16, 2009

It’s Spring. Sex is in the air, and in my eyes, and in my nose. Pollen is the price we pay for all this plant procreation. I’ve gotten pretty good about wiping my hands after touching things outdoors, rinsing my face. It is nice to see that the common sense idea of rinsing inside the nose can be just as effective. Nice, too, for the Utopian Economist that using a neti pot can be so cheap, doesn’t require a trip to a physician, over or under the counter medication-or at the very least reduces the need for meds. The New York Times discusses how a couple of small studies have confirmed the effectiveness of this ancient device. 

 

photo by hamron, some rights reserved.

 
 

One benefit is that irrigation can clear nasal passages without dryness or “rebound” congestion, which occurs when overuse of decongestants leads to dependence and irritated tissue.

In one independent study in 2008, researchers examined a group of children with severe allergies. They found that regular nasal irrigation with a mild saline solution significantly eased symptoms and helped reduce the need for steroid nasal sprays. A 2007 study at the University of Michigan looked at 121 adults with chronic nasal and sinus problems. Over two months, the scientists found that those treated with nasal irrigation reported greater improvements than those treated with a spray.

@ Really? – The Claim – Nasal Irrigation Can Ease Allergy Symptoms – Question – NYTimes.com.

 
 

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Tags: allergies, Health, nasal congestion, nasal irrigation, neti pot

posted by jim | April 7, 2009

I only noticed this after practicing mindfulness for a month or two, but it was a powerful message, a desire really; to do nothing. To not be swayed. To go on a “media fast” as Andrew Weil suggests. I look at my book shelf with titles I haven’t gotten to and I feel satiated. The television sounds like a distraction that only a mad person would resort to and I turn off the radio in my car to hold on to a single thought. Feeling full, having enough is a rare thing, and desire always returns.

 I don’t feel compelled to shop to save the economy, that isn’t economy, that is foolishness.

photo by -sten-, some rights reserved.

“Another lesson we can derive from the dictionary definition of ‘frugal’ is the recognition that we don’t need to possess a thing to enjoy it–we merely need to use it. If we are enjoying an item, whether or not we own it, we’re being frugal. For many of life’s pleasures it may be far better to ‘use’ something than to ‘possess’ it (and pay in time and energy for the upkeep). So often we have been like feudal lords, gathering as many possessions as possible from far and wide and bringing them inside the boundaries of the world called ‘mine.’ What we fail to recognize is that what is outside the walls of ‘mine’ doesn’t belong to the enemy; it belongs to the ‘rest of us.’ And if what lies outside our walls is not ‘them’ but ‘us,’ we can afford to loosen our grip a bit on our possessions. We can gingerly open the doors of our fortress and allow goods (material and spiritual) to flow into and out of our boundaries.” -Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez, Your Money or Your Life
@ utopianeconomics » Lingua Utopian

 

 

Category: Health, Mental Health DIY, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: Andrew Weil, enoughness, frugality, Joe Dominguez, mindfulness, Monique Tilford, Vicki Robin, Your money or your life

posted by jim | March 30, 2009

Category: Health, Mental Health DIY | No Comments »
Tags: Andrew Weil, DIY mental health, Health, Jon Kabat-Zinn, mind/body, mindfulness