Forum Post: Gardener Bobs view on healthcare
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 10, 2011, 11:43 p.m. EST by bobthesnob
(13)
from Austin, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Hey Dudes,
The problem I see with universal healthcare is that people are thinking like politicians. Politicians throw money at problems and we have a massive debt. Our water, food, air, soil are toxic. The soil in America is completely absent of vital nutrients due to petroleum fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and improper crop rotation. If we addressed this problem, banned GMO's, addressed the issue of obesity and junk food, healthcare costs could reduce tremendously.
I am a gardener and that's my healthcare plan. I eat organic and haven't had a cold in three years. I'm the healthiest I've been in my life I don't have health insurance by choice mostly because I don't want to give money to greedy insurance companies! I pay for the dentist, that's it :)
Unfortunately not everybody can afford organic and especially with store bought products, transparency becomes a problem.
Not to mention the whole "personal choice vs personal health" thing. Addressing the issue is the first step and then we can discuss what we can do. Should we limit the amount of fast food restaurants on a certain block? Should we raise wages so that people can afford organic or vice versa? (aka lower the price of organics so that more people can afford it) Should we encourage community gardens in even the most urbanized places so that they can grow their own food? Should we strengthen our food regulators so they can actually do their jobs effectively? How will organizations like the CCF react to all this and what can we do? Shall we also change the way we grow and produce?
There are many questions to be addressed here.
Okay the issue of price is because of the production and importation of organic. Most of it is imported. There are 922 million acres of ag land in the us. 4.8 million of those are certified organic! That's .5%! Most of our organic food is imported from other countries or transported from california. I think people would rather choose organic if they could. If we have a more efficiently functioning government, financially, people would have more money. You can't tell people what they can and can't eat. If we change the media ownership laws and expose the atrocities of mcdonalds, coca cola, general mills etc, people will wake up, they're waking up fast already. I had an idea the other day about community gardens. There are so many old houses that can be torn down or moved. The municipalities (us) could buy them and turn the land into community gardens. You'd be surprised how much food you can produce in a half or quarter acre. And yes there are tons of ways to grow food in big cities as well. Third party regulators like oregon tilth are the most effective. You don't have to deal with the bs of a bureaucracy. what is ccf? Yes dramatically change the way we commercially farm, in fact go backwards 100 years the way they were doing it. Petroleum farming has never yielded a higher crop ever. It needs to be local, organic and sustainable.
I do agree with your ways on growing and the tearing down unused property for co-ops.
Then there is the issue of astroturf lobbyists like the CCF and peopl who simply will not change. There's been tons of anti drug PSAs from our TVs to our schools. At this point I think everybody has read or seen Fast Food Nation, King Corn, Supersize Me, etc. The fast food industry is still doing well. So yes it does become about personal choice as well as accessibility.
The CCF = The Center For Consumer Freedom. They're basically a group that will look out for the interests of fast food, meat packing companies, tobacco companies, etc. If they saw what you said, they would call you a "Green Nazi" and say that you would go against freedom and that people earn money so they should be able to choose what to buy, even if it kills or sickens them. I know I know...cuckoo!
But yeah it's a good start.