They called it the "Affordable Healthcare Act." Probably the Affordable Sick Care Act would have been more accurate. Or Mandatory Health Insurance Act. Seems it has helped some and hurt others. I'm glad I personally don't have to use it as I have the VA (I'm a veteran). Why am I glad? See "Death by Medicine" below.
The big question is what has it done for the health of our population? After all, if we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, we should have the best health. What's the reality? Check the following links:
World Health Organization’s Ranking of the World’s Health Systems - USA is 37th.
Life Expectancy - According to these charts, we're 31st.
CIA Chart of Life Expectancy Estimate for 2016 - Here, USA is 42nd.
Infant Mortality - 37 other countries have less infant mortality than the U.S.
Total Health Expenditure Per Capita Per Country - Finally, we're number one at something related to health.
Death by Medicine - A comprehensive overview of our health with some excellent charts showing causes of deaths. Medicine and health care are not synonymous.
What are we doing wrong? Concentrating on sick care and not health care and prevention. If the U.S. concentrated on health and prevention, we wouldn't need Obamacare and we wouldn't need vaccines - hardly anyone would get sick and insurance costs would go way down as there would be very few claims....assuming people followed the guidelines, and assuming the guidelines were correct.
The problem is that there is no money involved in staying healthy. Well, maybe a little for supplements. And a little for those who would be responsible for cleaning the environment. So each person needs to follow their own schedule of health, much like I have done over the past 40 years. It took a while to fine tune things and would have been faster if the internet had been around when I started. Now it would be a lot quicker.
What has been my result? I went from getting sick 4-5 times a year with every cold, virus, flu, etc., that was going around, not to mention had IBS, allergies, bronchitis, ulcers, etc., to not being sick for over 5 years as of now, and only once or twice in the past 10 years. So although I have the VA health system, I almost never use it, and then only for a physical injury.
Some new things I just learned about the flu and the flu vaccine: Only 16% (about 1 out of 6) told that they have the flu actually do have the flu. The other 5 out of 6 have some other upper respiratory infection. If two people out of 100 would have gotten the flu, and the flu vaccine saved one of them from getting the flu (i.e. - saved one out of 100) they say it was 50% effective. I say it was 1% effective. And finally, those who get the flu shot are 4x more likely to get some other upper respiratory infection compared to those who did not get the shot. On the other hand, I haven't had the flu shot or flu or other upper respiratory infections for over 10 years thanks to healthy diet and supplements. Oh - I almost forgot to mention, the flu vaccine has one of the worst amounts and worst side effects of all the vaccines.
The funny thing is (and it's not really funny) someone I know got the flu shot, and a few weeks later got sick (flu or flu like?) and said, "I probably would have died if I didn't get the shot," meaning it would have been a lot worse. Even though I told him I don't get the flu and why, he still thinks I'm the crazy one for not getting the shot.
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