Health

The framers of our republic were obsessed with avoiding what they called dependency. But what they meant by this word is likely lost on most Americans today. Most of us think of dependency as addiction to alcohol, to drugs, to foreign oil. The framers had a much more basic idea: A citizen was considered dependent when he was not free to act in the public good because his own well-being depended on a particular result. "Nondependency" meant being able to choose what was right, without worrying about personal consequences  no agenda other than a democratic one.

Of all the things that have not gone according to the framers' plan, perhaps this is the most significant. . . [The] losers are the future; the winners, the past. And it takes an extraordinarily perverse view of progress to think that protecting the past is the best path to the future.

-Constitutional & Technology lawyer Lawrence Lessig in Wired Magazine, November 2006

Our small 3-part series on Health as a Commodity is only the tip of the iceberg, designed to impress upon you the very existence of the iceberg, nothing more, nothing less. It's an iceberg with which we must contend if true health care reform is going to take place.

We've paid a large price for a broken healthcare system. The symptoms are well known. We own the most expensive healthcare system in the world, by a large margin. Yet, by all conventional measurements, we own one of the least effective systems among 'modern' nations. And in reference to all the features of 'Health Justice' - freedom, choice, cost and access - our system is failing.

Discrete legislative and policy battles over specific products, modalities and regulations are part of our mission. We will continue to alert you about, and fight with you on, these fronts. However, we are prepared to embark with you on a systemic challenge, a mission to bring natural health to the table of health care reform now.

You've heard all about the changes that are coming. We want to reframe that conversation. What's coming are challenges and opportunities. We've alerted you to some of the challenges that are right around the corner. We want to meet those challenges, and turn them into opportunities by declaring 2009 to be the Year of Natural Health. Many of you have suggested this. It's a great idea whose time is now.

We've said before that the same natural health principles that create healing for us individually apply to the health of The Body Politic. It is time to bring those same innate resources to the reform of our health care system.

In a democracy, silence = agreement. Now is not the time to remain quiet in the promotion of natural health as a fundamental piece of health care reform. Without you, there is no Citizens For Health. Without you, there will be no healing of the Body Politic. Without you, there will be no sustainable health care reform that incorporates natural health principles.