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My suggestion is to use the money to buy vacant lots in low-income areas, and turn them into community gardens.  This would get people outside more, some would learn new skills, neighbors would talk to one another more, the local residents would have more investment in their own neighborhoods, and best of all, people who typically have little access to healthy, fresh produce, would have it.  This could be expanded if there were resources to having little flocks of hens who could supply the community gardeners with fresh eggs.  There are lots with abandoned homes that need to be demolished, which could be converted to community gardens.  There are organizations that exist to help with organizing this. http://www.urbanfarmonline.com/ for example

posted 1 year, 10 months ago
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Hear, hear! Couldn't have said it better myself.  People who are poor and undereducated have poorer health as a general rule.  There is a direct correlation.  But our country values so many other things before equitable systems and education.  We value war, organized sports, pork for large corporations.  It is a spiritual problem on so many levels.

posted 2 years, 1 month ago
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Here is how we can reduce costs:

1. Insurance should be billed based in part upon the policy holder's BMI (Basic Metabolic Index).  People have to start taking responsibility for the things they CAN control which increase their health risk.  Obesity is the single biggest contributor to poor health, and to the high cost of health care at this time.

2. We need to cut all doctor salaries.  Doctors in the US make much more  than doctors do in any other country relative to the rest of the population and other professionals. In many cases, they are doing a minimum amount of actual care.  Actual patient care is done by nurses, medical assistants, and certified nursing assistants.  Patients who see a nutritionist often benefit more than if they see a doctor and receive a prescription for statin drugs. 

3.  We need a lot more mental health treatment and drug & alcohol treatment and a lot LESS prescription drug treatment of every ailment you can imagine.  Addiction to prescription drugs is now a huge and costly problem to medical systems.  The medical systems are not really addressing the underlying need of many patients.  About half of medical care is not addressing the spiritual & emotional hunger that patients have.  Spiritual vacuousness and emotional pain are somatized and treated as physical problems--very expensive and ineffective.  Massage therapy produces fewer side effects than antidepressants and tranquilizers.  So does acupuncture and Chinese medicine.

4. Medical care should be reimbursed based upon effectiveness to the patient, not upon fee for service.  European countries are spending about half of what the US spends on care and they have better outcomes as measured by health indicators such as infant mortality, morbidity statistics, etc.

I could go on, but you probably don't have the time in this hour.  I work inside the medical system.

Thank you,

Karen Risch

Portland, OR

posted 2 years, 1 month ago
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