by Alex Lubarsky(CEO of Health Media Group,
Inc.)
 When
my son was about eight, he and some of his friends decided to have
a little fun by sliding down the roof of our house, luckily the
crew of daredevils did not get hurt. When my wife found out about
it from a neighbor, she promptly punished the boy for a month, essentially
taking away his freedom and what little independence he had once
enjoyed.
Similarly, when we behave in a self-destructive
manner, someone, in this case our government, will want to step
in to save us from ourselves. Do you think healthcare would be on
the minds of our politicians if the country was mostly well? They
are not, for example, looking to take over fine watch manufacturers,
because all of our watches work without skipping a beat, so no one
gives it any thought. Our health as a nation, on the other hand,
is in emergency care. It’s a highway catastrophe, with the
patient sprawled on the ground, bleeding and gasping for air. So
emergency crews are rushing to the scene to try and rescue the victim.
Obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease are a rampant; it is
a modern version of the Black Plague, infecting the adult population
as it slithers towards the youngest among us. In fact, the fastest
growing contingent of obese people in the United States is made
up of six-month-old babies.
Now that we have this unprecedented demand on
our system of care, everyone who is not well, and that is most of
our population, demands to have unlimited access to a personal entourage
of highly trained medical professionals, and…they think someone
else should be paying for it.
Before I go any further, let me just say that
I hate socialized anything. I think anyone who can entertain these
ideas has not lived under that kind of soul-stealing, everything-for-everyone-yet-nothing-for-anyone
system and perhaps has to experience it firsthand before the reality
of its dangers slowly begins to unveil. So, in that regard, maybe
socialized medicine in the United States is just the toxic medicine
that the doctor ordered.
The other point I would like to make, as I lay
out my case for the government’s takeover of our healthcare
system, is that the loss of freedom is usually in direct correlation
with apathy. When we stop caring about something, we create a vacuum
for some opportunistic entity to take over. If we stop caring about
our garden, for example, weeds will take over the garden. If we
stop caring about our freedom, there are plenty of sinister groups
ready to subjugate us and take away everything we hold dear. And
if we stop caring about our health, the government will look to
impose something like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act.
So if we, as a nation, have neglected our well-being
for so long that the situation has become dangerous to the future
of our survival, maybe we no longer deserve to be in charge of our
own healthcare. Maybe the government will do a better job taking
care of you then you. Clearly, they can’t do any worse.
I hope you are at least a little angry, for having
me suggest that you, an American citizen, a smart, independent thinker,
and one responsible for building the most advanced and prosperous
country in the history of mankind, is not capable of making decisions
about your own life, and that you would be better off with Big Brother
looking after you. Perhaps now we can examine this situation from
something of a different perspective. If, let’s say, you don’t
care about your health, and if on a daily basis you do a hundred
things to undermine it, yet nothing to improve it, then you don’t
deserve to live in freedom. Even if this government attempt to take
over healthcare fails, which it will, it does not leave us any better
off. We are all so sick that we can’t afford to maintain our
self- imposed lifestyle diseases indefinitely as this current system
of care is designed to do.
In my mind, the answer is twofold. First and foremost,
we must take responsibility for our own health and well-being; we
must understand its value in relation to our life and everything
we consider important. We must begin educating ourselves on the
fundamentals of a lifestyle that fosters vibrant health, and we
must reverse this dangerous trajectory of homicide via self-inflicted
wounds, if not for ourselves then for the future generation, for
our children.
Second, we must shift the teeter-totter of the
current model of care from a focus on disease to that of prevention
and wellness. Today we’re spending almost 3 trillion dollars
per year handing out band-aids at the proverbial highway pile up,
one that is still going on, growing and picking up momentum, with
a new crop of victims every day that will need attention and more
emergency care from our government. So really, our politicians are
simply trying to do what they have been asked, indirectly, by the
people they serve. We asked them to protect us, to save us in an
emergency, and this ‘Three Stooges Tango’ is their laughable
attempt.
The future of this nation is threatened by the
trajectory of the health of its citizens, and we are looking to
the wrong institutions to save us. The fire department is awesome
when there is a fire, but virtually useless if you keep setting
yourself on fire. Government is wonderful, especially the one in
the United States, for the purposes it was designed, but clumsy
and almost comical when you ask it, through your actions, to run
your life.
Make no mistake, the situation is dire, but the
answer to our national health problems, and the fate of our freedom
as individuals to make decisions about our life, is dependent on
whether or not we choose to get off the roof and start living like
responsible adults.
Alex Lubarsky is the founder of Health
Media Group, Inc., host of the weekly Health Media LIVE radio program,
and one of the organizers of the NAVEL Expo. He was born in Moscow,
Russia, during the reign of the former USSR. His passion is to inspire
personal responsibility and the freedom that it fosters.
Check out the NAVEL Expo website: Upcoming
Expo is May 20, 2012 http://www.navelexpo.com/expo.php
Alex Lubarsky, CEO
Health Media Group, Inc.
PO Box 40
Cedarhurst, NY 11516
Tel: (516) 596-8974
Email: info@healthmedia.us
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