Why I Am a Conservative on Health Care Reform

by Dr. Andrew Weil

I appeared on Larry King Live Wednesday night to discuss health care reform with a panel of respected, high-profile physicians. I sounded the themes I wrote about in The Wrong Diagnosis: that Americans must change the content of health care, not just access to it, or we'll remain among the unhealthiest people in the developed world, and the costs will sink us.

Bill Frist, a physician and former Senate Republican majority leader from Tennessee, responded with what has become the conservative line: that "we do have the best health care" and what Americans principally need is "insurance reform" rather than improved health care practices. Later in the program were video clips of what host Wolf Blitzer termed "conservatives" disrupting town hall meetings on health care reform. Clearly, the prospect of change in health care is highly emotional and disturbs many people.

But here's my question: Since when is it conservative to embrace new, overpriced, corrupt systems, like the health-destroying and ruinously expensive protocols of much of modern medicine? "Conservative" has several meanings, but two central ones are "favoring traditional views and values," and "avoiding excess."

I hold that nothing could be more wild, unconstrained, and downright liberal than the path medicine has taken in just the last 20 years -- an unprecedented bacchanalia of excess and contempt for traditional American values.

Pharmaceuticals, once just one of many therapeutic modalities, are now synonymous with medical care; more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines for chronic health problems. Medical journals, formerly bastions of objectivity, are today often ghostwritten shills for moneyed interests. And physicians, once free to make healing their only goal, must now obey the dictates of lawyers and stockholders by ordering endless tests and dangerous, dubious surgeries for even minor conditions.

While billions of dollars are shunted into very few pockets via such abuses, insurance premiums skyrocket, leaving 47 million Americans with no coverage. The result of medicine's libertine spree? The relief agency Remote Area Medical, established to bring health care to rural parts of third-world nations, now sends 60 percent of its missions to U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, California and Knoxville, Tennessee.

By contrast, integrative medicine (IM), the system we teach at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson (and that is taught at more than 40 other medical schools nationwide including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic) is profoundly conservative in at least three ways:

1. It is philosophically conservative in that it aims to restore core values of medicine that were strong in the past, such as a reverence for the healing power of nature and the importance of the therapist-patient relationship.

2. It is medically conservative in stressing prevention and advocating lesser rather than greater intervention -- the least invasive, least harmful, least expensive treatments that the circumstances of illness demand. IM practitioners always observe the Hippocratic precept of "First, do no harm," relying in simpler interventions whenever possible and turning to more drastic ones only when the former fail to produce desired outcomes.

3. It is fiscally conservative in its willingness to look beyond the blinders of high-tech medicine to identify inexpensive therapies that may be useful and in its insistence that they be held to the same standard for clinical- and cost-effectiveness in well-designed outcomes trials.

I urge Senator Frist and all Americans to join me and thousands of physicians and patients in demanding a return to sensible, sustainable, conservative values in medicine. The liberals have had their day.

Andrew Weil, MD, is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com. Follow Dr. Weil on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook.

Tikkun Magazine - Deepak Chopra on How to Convert to A Peace Economy

Tikkun Magazine - Deepak Chopra on How to Convert to A Peace Economy

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Creating prosperity from within

Author and speaker Deepak Chopra hails the global downturn as an opportunity to rebuild the world’s economy

By Shannon Sweetnam

6/15/2009 - “We are not in an economic crisis, we are in an economic opportunity,” Deepak Chopra told the crowd of Kellogg students who flooded the Tribune Auditorium on May 29 to hear him speak.

	Related Video Watch video of Deepak Chopra's presentation

“Today, we are witnessing a dying carcass. We are witness to the collapse of an exhausted system built on toxic assets. This is an opportunity for reincarnation.”

Chopra is the founder and director of education at The Chopra Center for Well Being, co-founder and president of the Alliance for a New Humanity, and a world leader in mind-body medicine. He is also an adjunct professor at Kellogg, where he teaches The Soul of Leadership, an executive education class focused on personal awareness.

Chopra told the student audience that it can no longer deny that it is not directly affected by the fact that half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day.

“There is no solution to the world’s problems unless it is global,” said Chopra, explaining that the problem of poverty is intertwined with crises around the world. “The old paradigm about ‘me’ as a separate self is dead. What’s happening today forces us to recognize that we are members of one body, one energy field and all contained in one global consciousness.”

Chopra urged Kellogg students to think of business not as a means to enhancing shareholders’ value but as a way to enhance the quality of life. “If we keep that in mind, there is no limit to the prosperity coming out of here,” he said.

He also reminded students of the power of their creativity and collective consciousness. “Each of you contains the potential and creativity needed to help turn this crisis around and to create prosperity,” he said. “All we have to do now is get in touch with our soul, where our humanity lives and where we connect with each other.”

Chopra added that prosperity is a process that must be created from within. He offered a number of ideas for doing so, including ridding oneself of clutter, including the energy wasted on mindless things; focusing on nourishment, whether with regard to one’s body, relationships or the economy; and giving something away each time one purchases something.

“If you buy a new suit, give an old suit away. If you eat at an expensive restaurant, pay for a meal for a homeless person,” he advised. “And every once in a while, do something not motivated by profit.”

Dear Abbey, My ecomomy has been cheating on me...

An article from the San Franciso Chronicle by Deepak Chopra:

The shock is in the statistics. For the months of September and October, consumer confidence fell lower than at any time since it's been measured, going back forty years. The same for consumer expectations for the future. More than 70% of Americans say they are spending less than last year. A third of Americans are at risk for moving downward economically, another third know someone who is in that position.

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What statistics can't measure is the psychological blow we've all taken. Rich, poor, and in between, the economy has been cheating on us. The relationship has been hit hard. It may or may not fall apart.

It didn't help that the first people to be bailed out were the cheaters themselves. At a time when they lost over $80 billion for their investors, Wall Street's leading investment banks paid themselves $230 billion in compensation and bonuses. GM is crashing, but its CEO has a reported annual salary of $8.5 million. A pittance, actually, compared to the take-home of a few leading hedge fund managers, who reported incomes for 2007 in the range of 2 to 3 billion dollars.

It's like having your husband take you to McDonald's while he takes every other woman in town to the Ritz in Paris.

The first stage of reacting to a cheating spouse is shock, followed by hurt, anger, guilt, and the need for revenge. One way or another, the American public is going to go through all of those reactions. It won't happen fast. We've been forced into rational solutions — particularly the big TARP bailout of $700 billion, with a huge stimulus package to come — long before the initial shock has worn off.

Almost a century ago the great British economist John Maynard Keynes observed that all markets are psychological. For the past decade, the mood has been manic; now it's depressive. The one thing that might have brought steadiness (serious regulation of Wall Street) was considered unnecessary, even by the smartest, most liberal economists. They were saying, in essence, that your spouse will be faithful even if you don't demand that he or she come home at night. Cutting someone loose isn't the best way to feel secure in a relationship. Or in an economy.

Now that the cheating has been exposed, one wonders what it will take to restore confidence. Time, I imagine. Public works and stimulus packages are all well and good. Saving endangered industries is the compassionate thing to do. So is saving endangered mortgages. But somebody should step forward and talk about the emotional wounds being suffered all around. You may scoff at therapy when times are good, but there's no substitute for it when times are rough. People want their feelings heard, understood, taken seriously, and then healed. It's true in a relationship; it's just as true in a society.

Deepak is the author of over 50 books on health, success, relationships and spirituality, including his most recent novel, "Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment," available now at www.deepakchopra.com. He is an Adjunct Professor at Kellogg School of Management.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/12/22/chopra122208.DTL#ixzz0O9t99iRo