Healthcare Systems and Their Structure

Constantly under review and scrutiny, the issues on healthcare Systems have become international.

Made up mainly of organizations and individuals, these healthcare structural systems are designed to meet a target population's need for health care. On an international level, there is a diverse variety of health care systems. In some countries the planning of the health care systems are market driven and participated in by the private sector. In other countries the systems are composed of government and non-government entities such as religious groups, trade unions charities and or other coordinative bodies that are centrally run and planned, to enable the delivery of healthcare services to the populations they target. In other words, health care planning has evolved.

According to a World Health Organization report in 2000, the main goals of health systems are the ability to provide a responsive health service alongside considerations of fair financial contributions. In order to appraise overall health care systems, a proposed two-dimensional approach was conceived. The first dimension consists of equity and the second is composed of efficiency, quality and acceptability.

Several proposals have come from the Senate in the United States and the White House. Health care system issues according to President Obama are issues that should be addressed immediately and placed them on a top priority list. A universal health care system does not exist or is practiced in the United States. Some countries subsidize their universal healthcare directly from government coffers. This kind of universal healthcare is called socialized medicine, which is a combination of private and public delivery systems, with most countries spending public funds for this service delivery. Government taxes plays the role of funding this system supplemented and strengthened with private payments.

The World Health Organization (WHO) report of 2000 ranks each member country's health care system. Discussions on the positive and negative aspects of replacing health care systems with insurance systems use this report's quotation. However, the WHO has remarked that as ranking healthcare systems is a complex task, these ranking tables will no longer be produced. Infant mortality and life expectancy are two main variables that are used in the ranking. Out of 198 countries, Canada ranks thirtieth and the US ranks thirty seventh. The World Health Organization ranks France, San Marino, Italy, Andorra, Singapore, Malta, Spain, Austria, Oman and Japan as the world's top ten.

With the founding of the UN (United Nations), there was planning and discussion on the need for a single entity to serve, observe and assess global health care system trends. Thus the World Health Organization was formed in 1948 on April 7th with headquarters based in Geneva, Switzerland. Annually the WHO is recognized by the celebration of a World Health Day. The WHO is the coordinative and directive authority for United Nations' member countries individual health systems. Member countries of the United Nations are allowed WHO membership through the acceptance of the WHO constitution. To date there are a total of 198 member nations participating in WHO programs.

Brent McNutt enjoys networking with healthcare professionals online. He also likes talking about Landau Scrubs and Landau Shoes and also likes writing articles about various topics.

Healthcare Reform With a Twist

So many clinics and services are available to us today, but whether it is alternative or conventional it is all so high priced that only those that are fortunate enough to have the money in their pockets to cover the cost are privy to the care and knowledge of these services. When in fact there are many ways for us to heal that are absolutely free.

It is time to promote more preventative measures to illness. Studies show that most disease stems from emotional issues. If we approach the care of each individual from a self healing perspective I truly believe that for most of us we would not have to be concerned about health care costs because each of us would be balanced, both emotionally and physically and not require the services of the health institutions and insurance companies that are out of control. To this end the government would not be involved and we would be taking more personal responsibility for our own health.

Many set back eat foods that are pretty much contaminated (fast foods, boxed foods, etc.), never exercise, make excuses as to why we cannot meditate or connect and then in turn blame our health issues on outside sources such as institutions that have only their monetary gain in interest, relationships and anything else we can find to blame.

It is time to take personal responsibility for our own health. It is my belief that this is the purpose of all that transpiring in our nation today. We are now being given a choice to start seeking within or to continue seeking without.

I have had my own personal experience with self healing one of which is that I healed a double fractured neck without the assistance of conventional medicine. I did not have the money for the surgery so through meditation and talking with my body and cells I was able to mend my neck from only six percent usage to full usage. I have managed to make it almost all of the way through menopause in much the same way. I take no hormonal treatments I just balance myself through communication with my body. I can do this because I believe I can do this. So my message is this if you are faced with an illness that stems from your emotions, take the steps to do what you can to heal yourself. Let your heart guide you through the process. If you require support to assist you through the healing process seek out only the support that empowers you not enables you.

Some conventional medicine is necessary but we rely on it way too much for issues we could be dealing with ourselves. Some of the quotes below are some of most favorite regarding health. They seem to make all the since in the world to me.

There are many, many philosophies, diets, and folks that say there is only one way to achieve happiness and good health. We could spend months in research trying to find what would help us to achieve these things but for me I believe in simplicity and logic. I have never owned a set of scales to weigh myself and I was never exposed to the New Age Movement.

Since my exposure to the different ideas and educated myself on the New Age ideas and the many ways to keep ourselves healthy I have come full circle to my original and simple ways of belief of what is well serving and it is basic, it is simple, and it is very logical.

The phrase we are what we eat carries much truth for me because as we have progressed into this fast paced, fast food, run around til you drop society we have become less healthy more stressed and more emotionally imbalanced as a whole. For instance Utah now leads in the prescription arena. We are prescribed more antidepressants that almost any other state in the nation. We are right up there with Oregon and Maine. In fact we are prescribed nearly twice as much as those in California and three times as much as those in New York and New Jersey. (ref. usa today). Nationwide studies have shown that 164 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written in the U.S. in 2008. (ref. The National Center on addiction and substance abuse at Columbia University)

We are popping pills for everything. Just to name a few, we are taking pills for emotions, weight, blood sugar, chemical imbalances, behavioral problems, sexual dysfunction, and there are many more. So why is this? Well, if you do the research it is not difficult to find an answer.

We are eating more out of a box and fast food stops and we are living our lives at such a fast pace that we are not taking the time to relax. Rather than to eat our foods in the way our bodies were designed to digest them we combine our proteins and carbohydrates causing us to have stomach discomfort, diabetes, ADD, fibromyalgia, etc. Never mind the fact that our fast foods and processed foods are filled with things that are detrimental to the human body.

We have become a society that have become followers of the ole might dollar and living at a pace that has raised our stress levels to devastating levels. This is wearing us out and breaking down our immune and emotional systems and our community and family units.

So folks here is my recipe for a happy healthy life,

1. SLOW DOWN, take some quiet time and rest your mind and body every day. Just pick a time of day to take fifteen minutes for yourself.

2. EAT by DESIGN, eat the way your body was designed to. Strive to limit the combination of proteins and carbohydrates. You can pretty much eat what you want as long as you combine the foods correctly. Stay away from processed and fast food.

Here are some sites for more info:

3. BALANCE YOUR EMOTIONS, Experiencing these emotions is a normal part of life but when one single emotion dominates, it brings your entire body out of balance and can produce illness. You can balance your emotions by taking time out, journaling, exercise, and just taking the time to breath though it. If someone or something is causing you distress look within to find the answer as to why. You are the only one that has control over you.

4. THINK IN POSITIVES, if you train yourself to think in a positive manner you become stronger not only physically but emotionally as well. It also very catchy. Think in positives and watch those around you begin to do so as well. It produces a happy environment all the way around. If one chooses not to participate in your happiness then they will go where they are comfortable in a downer atmosphere. And that folks is okay!

5. LOVE YOURSELF, even if it takes writing yourself notes and hanging them on the mirror for you to see every day do it. Tell yourself you love you and soon you will feel it. If you do not love you then how can anyone else? When we love ourselves we attract LOVE. So go ahead and look in the mirror, look into your eyes and say I Love You!

With these five basic ingredients you can create come happiness and healthy lifestyle. This is where true abundance begins.

The author of this article, Lori Christensen, is the founder of a non-profit public charity devoted to the personal empowerment and community enhancement of her community http://www.thecosmicnudge.com
To access her ebook and meditations visit http://ancientwisdom.weebly.com/

Healthcare - The Soft Conspiracy

It is baffling that the American public has been so effectively stampeded into near-total dependence on a shoddy, crude, and ineffective system of health care, paying an extremely high price for drug and surgical interventions that seldom actually cure our chronic degenerative diseases.

Our Health Care System Is the Third Leading Cause of Death

Did you know that our health care system is the third leading cause of death in the United States? In a year 2000 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Barbara Starfield, M.D., wrote that physician error, medication error, and adverse events from drugs or surgery cause 225,400 deaths per year, making this the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer. Why would anyone let themselves be put at the mercy of a hospital, when most chronic illnesses are preventable? (Answer: Because they don't know any better.)

We have been sold a high-cost, high tech system for relieving the symptoms caused by a very low tech problem: our diet. We pay for health care, if we can even afford it, and then we continue to eat the foods that are proven to make us sick. Most of us don't know any better, because astounding discoveries in the area of human nutrition and its connection to disease have been suppressed and dismissed as "controversial".

We accept that "everyone gets sick"-a heart attack, cancer of some sort, stroke, diabetes, or Alzheimer's-so we pay for years into insurance so we can cover the extreme cost of the standard care we will need, but nobody ever asks WHY we get these diseases so often.

At the higher levels of medical research, there are people who know the answer to this question, but the Powers-That-Be-the hospital administrators and the many doctors who have invested many years and a lot of money into doing heart and cancer surgery and all the rest-don't want to give up their highly-paid specialties to become diet counselors.

So the truth that there is a better and less expensive way to prevent and even reverse major diseases we face may never reach the people. That truth is suppressed for the benefit of the drug makers, the hospitals, and the average doctor( who has very little training in nutrition, anyway).

Why You Haven't Heard There Is a Better, Cheaper Way To Achieve Health

The problem, in large part, is that there is a very subtle conspiracy taking place, mediated by money, to ensure that the public never clearly gets the message that it is our all-American diet of meat, milk products, and refined carbohydrates (sugar and white flour) that are the root cause of most of our chronic degenerative diseases.

You may be wondering why this should be of interest to a politically-concerned audience. It should be of interest because it is a perfect example of how our political system has come to represent the interests of wealthy sectors of the business community, to the detriment of the vast majority of the American people.

The facts of nutrition have been suppressed so that:

The Meat and Dairy industries can continue to earn high profits on subsidized agricultural commodities which are clearly implicated in extensive medical research as being responsible for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers. (This is not including the terrible damage to the environment caused by both the waste problem due to raising meat, egg, and milk-producing animals, but also the idiocy of using imported fossil fuels to grow healthy vegetable protein which is then fed to animals to return about one-fifth as much less-healthy animal protein. And we are made to pay more for the privilege of the cachet of eating something that is less-healthy for us, but higher-profit for the food industry!)

But the Media Don't Want to Talk About This

The Major Media cooperate with this by soft-pedaling the hard evidence of this food/disease connection because they sell a lot of advertising space to the makers of the foods that are the source of our disease: fast food companies, prepared food manufacturers, frozen foods, diet foods - all of which are based on the basic formula of fatty meat, milk, cheese, and corn and wheat derivatives.

The Medical/Pharmaceutical cartel does its part by pushing pills and/or surgery to remedy every ailment that could cheaply be reversed by changing their patient's diet. This is clearly motivated by the profits obtained by selling prescription drugs and fifty or one hundred thousand dollar heart surgeries to millions of people every year. They would be out of business if patients learned the truth about what's causing our "diseases of affluence."

To say, as many in the medical field do, that patients are reluctant to change their diet drastically is just an excuse for their feeble attempts to inform patients that there are other clearly superior options. Who would risk the pain, expense, and danger of a major heart operation if they KNEW for certain that distinguished physicians such as Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn are obtaining better results for seriously ill heart patients through mere dietary changes? Only a masochist, I would venture to guess.

This conspiracy to profit from keeping the American public misinformed on the broad causes of why we have such a fantastically expensive health care system, has led us into the chute through which our government bureaucracies will gladly take charge of this great money-making system. Since when has turning anything over to the government led to greater efficiencies and less cost? They can't even run their own Veterans' Hospitals properly, so how could they claim to reorganize a huge national system of health provision?

The liberating truth is that what is needed is not more and better health care, but more and better health. This is available right now to those who choose to educate themselves on the care and feeding of their miraculous body.

I realize that many Americans won't be willing to do this, or if they try, they may be lured into some scam diet such as the one propounded by the late Dr. Atkins. That's a shame and is partially a result of our pitiful education system that hasn't taught us the basics of how to tell truth from self-serving fiction and half-truth.

I am not writing this to the average American, but to readers who are a lot more aware of the sea of misinformation and soft conspiracy that makes endless wars, industry bailouts and foreign political intrigues a means of draining the savings of the majority of this nation and funneling that wealth into the hands of the hands of major politcal contributors.

The story of how our health as individuals is being destroyed for the benefit of those same campaign contributors is every bit as big and important as the story of how America was steered into a war on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

This national conversation about how our "health care" will be provided is-as usual-missing the point. The real conversation we need to have is about how our typical American diet has produced the worst health of any of the major industrialized nations, which leaves us at the mercy of a medical/Media/Food Industry conspiracy to keep things more or less as they are: Profitable for them.

Paul H. Kemp is a lifelong entrepreneur and marketer. He has also served as an Economic Development Consultant for the U.S. Department of Commerce and local Chambers of Commerce, specializing in rural business opportunities for Oregon communities affected by changes in federal timber policies.

He currently is fascinated by the opportunity to help individuals take control over their own health in this global economic shake-up.

For more information on the revolution in health and fitness, visit http://www.HealthyPlanetDiet.com/

Planning and Design of Behavioral Healthcare Facilities

Behavioral Healthcare Facilities: The Current State of Design

In keeping with most districts of healthcare, the marketplace has seen a boom in the construction of Behavioral Healthcare facilities. Contributing to this increase is the paradigm shift in the way society views mental illness. Society is placing a heavier value on the need to treat people with serious addictions such as alcohol, prescription and elicit drugs. A large percentage of people suffering from behavioral disorders are afflicted with both mental and addictive behaviors, and most will re-enter communities and either become contributors or violators.

These very specialized facilities do not typically yield the attention from today's top healthcare designers and their quantity accounts for a small fraction of healthcare construction. However, Behavioral Healthcare projects are increasing in number and are being designed by some very prominent architectural firms such as Cannon Design and Architecture Plus. Many are creating state-of-the-art, award-winning contemporary facilities that defy what most of us believe Behavioral Healthcare design to be.

Changing the Way We Design Behavioral Healthcare Facilities

As with all good planners and designers, A+D (along with facility experts) are reviewing the direct needs of patient and staff while reflecting on how new medicine and modern design can foster patient healing rates, reduce environmental stress, and increase safety. This is changing the face of treatment and outcome by giving the practitioner more time to treat because they require less time and resources to "manage" disruptive patient populations.

The face of Behavioral Healthcare is quickly changing. No longer are these facilities designed to warehouse patients indefinitely. And society's expectations have changed. Patients are often treated with the belief that they can return to their community and be a contributor to society. According to the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems (NAPHS), depending on the severity of illness, the average length of stay in a Behavioral Healthcare facility is only 9.6 days.

What has changed?

Jaques Laurence Black, AIA, president and principal of New York City-based daSILVA Architects, states that there are two primary reasons for the shortened admission period:

1. Introduction of modern psychotropic drugs that greatly speed recovery

2. Pressures from insurance companies to get patients out of expensive modes of care

To meet these challenges, healthcare professionals are finding it very difficult to effectively treat patients within the walls of antiquated, rapidly deteriorating mental facilities. A great percentage of these facilities were built between 1908 and 1928 and were designed for psychiatric needs that were principled in the belief to "store" not to "rehabilitate."

Also impacting the need for Behavioral Healthcare construction is the reluctance of acute-care facilities to provide mental health level services for psychiatric or addiction patients. They recognize that patient groups suffering from behavioral disorders have unique health needs, all of which need to be handled and treated only by very experienced healthcare professionals. This patient population also requires a heightened level of security. Self-harm and injuring staff and other patients are major concerns.

The Report of the Surgeon General: "Epidemiology of Mental Illness" also reports that within a given year about 20% of Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder and 5.4% suffer from a serious mental illness (SMI ) - defined as bipolar, panic, obsessive-compulsive, personality, and depression disorders and schizophrenia. It is also believed 6% of Americans suffer from addiction disorders, a statistic that is separate from individuals who suffer from both mental and addiction disorders. Within a given year it is believed that over one-quarter of America's population warrants levels of mental clinical care. Even if these statistics were cut in half, it cannot be denied as a serious societal issue.

With a growing population, effectively designing in accordance with such measures is at the heart of public health.

Understanding the Complexity of Behavioral Healthcare Design

Therefore, like Corrections, leading planners and designers specializing in Behavioral Healthcare are delving deeper to better understand the complexity of issues and to be the activist to design facilities that promote treatment and healing - and a safer community.

The following is a list of key design variables that are being studied and implemented:

1. Right Sizing

2. Humanizing Materials and Color

3. Staff-Focused Amneties and Happiness

4. Security and Safety

5. Therapeutic Design Tenants

Right-sizing

Today's Behavioral Healthcare facilities are often one-story single buildings within a campus size. Often debated by Clients due to costs, this design preference is driven by the demand for natural light, window views to nature for all patient areas, and outdoor open-air gardens "wrapped" within. All of this provides soothing qualities to the patient, reduces their anxieties, counteracts disruptive conduct and helps to reduce staff stress.

"When you look at the program mix in these buildings, there's a high demand for perimeter because there are a lot of rooms that need natural light. Offices, classrooms, dining areas, community rooms, and patient rooms all demand natural light, so you end up with a tremendous amount of exterior wall, and it forces the building to have a very large footprint." - James Kent Muirhead, AIA, associate principal at Cannon Design in Baltimore

These design principles are also believed to improve staff work conditions. Unlike a multi-story complex, at any moment staff can walk outdoors and access nature, free from visual barriers, and within a building that more accurately reflects building types that both patients and staff would encounter in their communities.

In addition to right-sizing for the overall building footprint, is right-sizing for internal patient and staff support area. Similar to the move we have seen in Corrections to de-centralize support spaces, Behavioral Healthcare is moving to decentralized nursing/patient units called "neighborhoods." With mental health facilities there is a large concern with distances and space adjacencies in relation to the patient room and patient support areas such as treatment and social spaces. Frank Pitts, AIA, FACHA, OAA president of Architecture Plus, Troy, NY, advocates neighborhoods that average 24-30 beds arranged in sub-clusters, called "houses", of 8-10 beds. Thus, each neighborhood consists of three houses. Often these layouts will include a common area where patients congregate and socialize, with a separate quiet room so patients can elect to avoid active, crowded areas. In addition Pitts states, "There's a move away from central dining facilities. So, while facilities will still have a central kitchen, it's a whole lot easier moving food than it is patients." However, it is important for the facility to mimic normal outside daily life routines, so patients are encouraged to frequently leave their neighborhoods to attend treatment sessions, and outdoor courtyards.

Humanizing Materials & Color

In all facilities that play a role in rehabilitation, design strives to create spaces that humanize, calm, and relax. Behavioral Healthcare patients need to feel that they are in familiar surroundings; therefore, the architectural vocabulary should feel comfortable and normal. Since these facilities are about rehabilitation (when possible) and encouraging patients to merge back into society, the facility should feel like an extension of the community. Their spaces should reflect the nature and architecture of the surrounding region and thus so, no two facilities should look too much alike.

"Our approach to designing these facilities is to view the facility as an extension of the community where patients will end up when they're released. Interior finishes also depend on geography because you want to replicate the environment patients are used to. You want to de-stigmatize the facility as much as possible." - Tim Rommel, AIA, ACHA, OAA, principal with Cannon Design in Buffalo, NY.

Therefore, materials and colors within these spaces want to feel familiar to one's region and everyday life. To soothe the psyche and rehabilitate, they want to feel soft and comfortable, yet visually stimulating. An interior that is overly neutral or hard in appearance is not appropriate. Materials should reduce noise, and colors should lift the spirit. This can help to create an environment in which the patient can learn, socialize, and be productive while easing anxieties, delivering dignity, and modifying behavior. As stated previously, behavioral studies advise the use of softer interior materials-like carpeting, wood doors and tile. Doing so translates directly to both patient and staff well-being, particularly staff safety, and makes for a nicer place to work. In addition, staff have more resources to "treat" instead of manage heated situations. When staff experiences are eased and satisfied, morale is boosted and life-saving rules and policies are more likely to be enforced.

Staff-Focused Amenities & Happiness

While reducing staff stress and fatigue through a healing supportive environment seems like an obvious goal, there are relatively few studies that have dealt with this issue in any detail. More attention has been given to patient outcomes. However, many leading hospitals that have adopted therapeutic tenants into their newly built environments have seen vast improvement through their "business matrixes" and financial reporting.

In one example, the Mayo Clinic, a national leader in implementing healing design in its facilities, has reported a reduction of nursing turnover from a national annual average of 20% to an annual 3%-4%. In another example, when Bronson Methodist Hospital incorporated evidence-based design into its new 343-bed hospital, they cited their 19%-20% nurse turnover rate dramatically dropped to 5%.

Now, both the Mayo Clinic and Bronson Methodist Hospital have had to initiate a waiting list for nursing staff seeking positions. This converts to better-trained and qualified staff, and a reduced error rate. Therefore, more health facilities are investing in staff support areas such as lounges, changing rooms, and temporary sleep rooms. Within these staff spaces and in the hospital throughout, facilities are also recognizing the need for upgrade materials, better day lighting, and an interesting use of color: One soon realizes that the need of patients and staff are interwoven, each impacting positively or negatively the other.

Security & Safety

Without debate, self harm and harm to staff is one of the biggest concerns mental health facilities manage. Often the biggest safety and security concern is the damage patients can do to themselves. "There are three rules I had drummed in me," says Mark Hanchar; Director of Preconstruction Services for Gilbane Building Company, Providence, R.I. "First, there can't be any way for people to hang themselves. Second, there can be no way for them to create weapons. Third, you must eliminate things that can be thrown." Hanchar says that the typical facility is, "a hospital with medium-security prison construction." This means shatter proof glass, solid surface countertops (laminate can be peeled apart), stainless steel toilets and sinks (porcelain can shatter), push pull door latches and furniture that cannot be pulled apart and used as a weapon. These are just to name a few.

Additionally, removing barriers between patients and nursing staff is a safety consideration. Frank Pitts, AIA, FACHA, OAA president of Architecture Plus, says what may be counter-intuitive for safety precautions, "Glass walls around nursing stations just aggravate the patients." Removing glass or lowering it at nursing stations so patients can feel a more human connection to nurses often calms patients. There is also discussion of removing nursing stations altogether; decentralizing and placing these care needs directly into the clinical neighborhoods and community spaces. Pitt says, "The view is that [nursing staff] need to be out there treating their patients."

Therapeutic Design Tenants

As medicine is increasingly moving towards "evidence-based" medicine, where clinical choices are informed by research, healthcare design is increasingly guided by research linking the physical environment directly to patient and staff outcomes. Research teams from Texas A&M and Georgia Tech sifted through thousands of scientific articles and identified more than 600 - most from top peer-reviewed journals - to quantify how hospital design can play a direct role in clinical outcomes.

The research teams uncovered a large body of evidence that demonstrates design features such as increased day-lighting, access to nature, reduced noise and increased patient control helped reduce stress, improve sleep, and increase staff effectiveness - all of which promote healing rates and save facilities cost. Therefore, improving physical settings can be a critical tool in making hospitals more safe, more healing, and better places to work.

Today's therapeutic spaces have been defined to excel in 3 categories:

1. Provide clinical excellence in the treatment of the body

2. Meet the psycho-social needs of patients, families, and staff

3. Produce measurable positive patient outcomes and staff effectiveness

Considering the cost of treating mental illness, which is exceedingly high, and wanting facilities to have effective outcomes, a further practice of incorporating therapeutic design is increasing. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIM H) approximated in 2008 that serious mental illnesses (SMI ), costs the nation $193 billion annually in lost wages. The indirect costs are impossible to estimate.

The estimated direct cost to clinically treat is approximately $70 billion annually and another $12 billion spent towards substance abuse disorders. In addition to the increased need of care and the boom in Behavioral Healthcare construction, it becomes an obligation to make certain that we as facility managers, architects, designers and manufacturers therapeutically plan and design these facilities.

Notably, in 2004, "The Role of the Physical Environment in the Hospital for the 21st Century: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity," published by Roger Ulrich P.H.D., of Texas A&M University, was released. In a culmination of evidence-based research, research teams found five design principles that contributed significantly to achieving therapeutic design goals.

The report indicates five key factors that are essential for the psychological well-being of patients, families and staff, including:

1. Access to Nature

2. Provide Positive Distractions

3. Provide Social Support Spaces

4. Give a Sense of Control

5. Reduce or eliminate environmental stress

Access to Nature

Studies indicate that nature might have the most powerful impact to help patient outcomes and staff effectiveness. Nature can be literal or figurative - natural light, water walls, views to nature, large prints of botanicals and geography, materials that indicate nature and most importantly, stimulating color that evokes nature. Several studies strongly support that access to nature such as day-lighting and appropriate colorations can improve health outcomes such as depression, agitation, sleep, circadian rest-activity rhythms, as well as length of stay in demented patients and persons with seasonal affective disorders (SAD).

These and related studies continue to affirm the powerful impact of natural elements on patient recovery and stress reduction. Thus, it is clear that interior designs which integrate natural elements can create a more relaxing, therapeutic environment that benefits both patients and staff.

Positive Distractions

These are a small set of environmental features that provide the patient and family a positive diversion from "the difficult" and, in doing so, also negate an institutional feel. These can be views to nature, water walls, artwork, super imposed graphics, sculpture, music - and ideally all of these want to be focused on nature and, when applicable, an interesting use of color. Therapeutic environments that provide such patient-centered features can empower patients and families, but also increase their confidence in the facility and staff. This helps with open lines of communication between patient and caregiver.

Social Support Spaces

These are spaces designed partially for the patient but mainly for the comfort and socialization of family members and friends of the patient; therefore, family lounges, resource libraries, chapels, sleep rooms and consult rooms all play a role. When family and friends play a key role in a patient's healing, these spaces encourage families to play an active role in the rehabilitation process.

Sense of Control

In times when patients and family feel out of control, it is very healing for the facility design and staff to provide it back when appropriate. Although, this cannot always be done suitably in mental healthcare facilities. However, when applicable, these design features include optional lighting choices, architectural way-finding, resource libraries, enhanced food menus, private patient rooms and

optional areas to reside in. A few well-appointed studies in psychiatric wards and nursing homes have found that optional choices of moveable seating in dining areas enhanced social interaction and improved eating disorders. When patients feel partially in control of their healing program and that the building features are focused to them, an increased confidence of the quality of care enters and tensions lower.

As with all therapeutic design, this allows the caregiver to use their resources healing in lieu of "managing" patient populations.

Reduce or Eliminate Environmental Stress

Noise level measurements show that hospital wards can be excessively noisy places resulting in negative effects on patient outcomes. The continuous background noise produced by medical equipment and staff voices often exceeds the level of a busy restaurant. Peak noise periods (shift changes, equipment alarms, paging systems, telephones, bedrails, trolleys, and certain medical equipment like portable xray machines are comparable to walking next to a busy highway when a motorcycle or large truck passes.

Several studies have focused on infants in NIC Us, finding that higher noise levels, for example, decrease oxygen saturation (increasing need for oxygen support therapy), elevate blood pressure, increase heart and respiration rate, and worsen sleep. Research on adults and children show that noise is a major cause of awakening and sleep loss.

In addition to worsening sleep, there is strong evidence that noise increases stress in adult patients, for example, heightening blood pressure and heart rate. Environmental surfaces in hospitals are usually hard and sound-reflecting, not sound-absorbing causing noise to travel down corridors and into patient rooms. Sounds tend to echo, overlap and linger longer.

Interventions that reduce noise have been found to improve sleep and reduce patient stress. Of these, the environmental or design interventions such as changing to sound-absorbing ceiling tiles, are more successful than organizational interventions like establishing "quiet hours."

Conclusion and Additional Information

The information contained in this excerpted report is intended as a guide for architects, specifiers, designers, facility planners, medical directors, procurers, psychologists and social workers which have a stake in providing improved facilities for behavioral healthcare patients. It is a portion of a report entitled "The Contributions of Color" authored by Tara Hill, of Little Fish Think Tank. Ms. Hill was commissioned by Norix Group Inc., in 2010 to research the role color plays in the safe operation of correctional facilities and behavioral health centers. More in-depth information specifically about the psychological influence of color and behavioral healthcare facility design can be found by reading the full report.

About the Author
Tara Hill is a full-scope, state registered interior designer, and the founder and principle of Little Fish Think Tank. Before founding Little Fish, Ms. Hill was an Associate + Senior Designer at HOK, and the Director of Interiors at Stanley, Beaman & Sears. She has implemented award-winning, innovative design solutions for commercial and institutional interiors.

Ms. Hill also has significant experience regarding the science and theory of color, both as a design tool and a promoter of healing. She has conducted extensive research in evidence-based design regarding color and its profound impact on the human spirit.

Prior to her work with Norix, Ms. Hill developed the Healing Colors Collection for Corian® solid surfaces, by Dupont®, for the healthcare environment. http://www.golittlefish.net

About Norix Group Inc.

For over 25 years, Norix has offered the most complete line of correctional furniture, for use throughout correctional facilities. With their extensive experience in providing secure furniture for prisons and jails, Norix is a trusted resource for every corrections application.

Norix also offers a vast array of furniture for several industries including behavioral healthcare, commercial, higher education, public safety, GSA and shelters. All furniture is designed for safety, security and extreme durability. Norix intensive-use furniture is extraordinary by design, surpassing industry standards for strength, safety and long-term performance.

Top Complaints in US Healthcare

One would have to dig very hard to find a greater hot button political topic in the United States than healthcare. It is a subject where every politician will publicly agree that change is necessary, but almost nobody can agree on what that change needs to be or how to enact it. It has led to such buzz terms as "Obamacare" and "death panels." Beyond anecdotal horror stories (which can erupt from any type of healthcare system), it is important to note what the main problems with the current system are. This article will focus on the four areas that have generated the most heated debate. The reader can probably think of a few others as they are going through this, but I will venture a guess that most issues could fit under these umbrellas with minimal effort.

Cost: One could make a strong argument that cost is complaint number one, two, three, and so on with the health care system. Costs associated with healthcare have risen at a rate far greater than inflation or wages. In fact, as of last year, it takes up nearly one-fifth of the nation's gross domestic product (source: CBS News). Compare this to two decades ago and healthcare accounted for less than one-tenth of the gross domestic product. This is clearly felt among the nation's citizens who are either paying more directly for doctor's visits and surgical procedures or experiencing the costs through higher health care premiums.

Another big aspect of this complaint revolves around the fact that it is primarily the consumers that are feeling the pain of these costs. One may frequently hear doctors, drug companies, hospitals, and insurance providers lament the rising cost structure that they face (which is definitely true, they do face higher costs themselves), but it is impossible for them to be churning out the record profits that the industry has in recent years without giving the consumer even a greater markup.

Availability/Quality: One factor that had driven prices so high is a limited availability of professionals, medicine, and facility space. This number gets even smaller if the consumer is looking for high quality care. It is no secret that the United States is facing a physician shortage. Every year, its medical schools produce a limited number of doctors to enter the workforce. Meanwhile, an expanding population produces an ever increasing number of individuals who require the services of these doctors. Hospital space and drug companies also take advantage of the demand outweighing supply by driving their prices up in accordance with standard economics.

Tort: This is arguably the top complaint from those with conservative leanings, and it is certainly not without merit. In the United States, tort accounts for a significant percentage of the GDP as well. It leads to doctors going to unnecessary lengths and doing unnecessary tests that are not in the best interest of the patient just to cover their behinds in case they get sued. There are no caps in place and the burden of proof often falls on the accused. That last statement is not true legally, but when juries see a crying widow or victim and know that the health care companies have deep pockets and are insured, they often give awards based upon bad results rather than whether or not the defendant actually acted in preventable error.

Our friends:
CBS News - referenced article
UA - offshore medical schools

Healthcare Reform - Why Not Having a Public Option Will Reduce Your Chances to Become a Homeowner

"Whether or not the public option is part of healthcare reform" is how President Obama began his answer to a healthcare reform question. The manner in which he answered that question struck a central nerve in the healthcare debate, as many of the leading voices, of the Obama administration seemed to be threatening to abandon the public option, for expanding health insurance coverage.

Making sure every American has access to high quality healthcare, is one of the most important challenges of our time. With the number of uninsured Americans is growing, skyrocketing premiums and more people are being denied coverage every day. A better healthcare system is essential to rebuilding the economy. The President has said, that he wants to make healthcare work for the people and for businesses, not just for the insurance companies and the drug companies. And in my opinion, he is right it should work for everybody. The operative word here is everybody.

Currently, three house committees have passed healthcare legislation, which includes a strong public option. These government-run insurance plans are designed, to encourage choice and competition in the marketplace. However, the public option has been the focal point, used by critics who say the overhaul of healthcare, would amount to a government takeover of healthcare. And nothing could be farther from the truth.

If we took a second to honestly look at and discuss what this debate is really about and let everybody see it for what it is. This whole discussion boils down to, those who have and those who don't have (insurance). On one side, providing you have a good job, that provides health insurance coverage, you feel there is no reason, you should have to face a possible tax increase, to help someone else who isn't as fortunate as you. On the other side are the self-employed, small business owners and those workers who work for a company, which can afford a good or any health insurance plan.

In deciding which direct you feel is the best way to deal with this issue, here is some additional information that you may not be aware of.

A couple of years ago the GAO (Government Accounting Office) produced a report that stated, taxpayers currently pay for an estimated 50% of all healthcare costs in America. This means the way things are currently, if you are receiving healthcare coverage through your employer, you are paying for your own health insurance as well as helping to pay for nearly half of the nation's healthcare costs.

Recently Families USA, a North Carolina consumer advocacy group, released a report showing how healthcare costs impacted the residents of the state, of North Carolina. Their report stated the cost of buying health insurance, for a North Carolina family increased more than five times faster, than income since the start of the decade. Since the year 2000, healthcare costs have doubled, yet income has increased only 18%. Insurance costs have risen from $6,650 to almost $13,100. The figure includes worker and employer payments for health care. The report says median earnings rose by 18 percent, from $23,100 to $27,330 in the same period.

Additionally, the middleclass is shrinking, in the near future more and more people are going to be classified as poor, as reported in Time Magazine, Economists View and numerous government reports. Worries about the middle class vanishing, shrinking, or otherwise dwindling are hardly new. The 2010 federal budget request addresses concerns that the middle class may be shrinking. It says: "Some Americans have not been able to keep up, falling out of the middle class and into poverty"; "the ladder into the middle class and beyond has become harder and harder to climb"; and warns that without high-quality schools, there is no way to "strengthen the middle class." In fact, it is believed 80% of a middle class Americans who are currently leaving the middle class, are ending up being classified as the poor.

What effect will this have on housing and homeownership? The answer to that question can be found in the remnants of a very recent historical event, Hurricane Katrina.

According to the US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, Hurricane Katrina severely interrupted the Gulf Coast oil industry. As a result, gas prices suddenly and dramatically increased substantially. With incomes not rising as fast many families found themselves facing financial difficulties, as the increasing fuel costs shattered the family budget. This forced many families to have to choose between having to pay for their rent or mortgage, food, healthcare and driving back and forth to work. In order to compensate their budgetary imbalances many families placed themselves in further debt with the use of credit cards.

During the spring of 2008 this process was repeated as oil speculators drove the price of oil to $143 a barrel, as result the cost of fuel doubled on consumers.

With healthcare rising at rate that's five times faster, than income it is just a matter of before the costs of one accident or illness will be able to wipe out an average American family, leaving them financially destitute.

Again you may be asking, what does this have to do with housing? What does that mean to you, the person trying to purchase their first home or the homeowner needing to consolidate their existing debt?

First, it means without healthcare reform, in the not to distant future it is going to be more difficult to obtain mortgage financing. With healthcare costs increasing so dramatically and eating up more and more of the family's budget, it means that people will have less money to put towards housing and it will become more difficult to save, meaning, it will be more difficult to come up with the money needed for their down-payments.

Without healthcare reform, it seems that health insurance pays less and less of the medical bill, even though premiums keep going up and up. Therefore, you can expect the number of medical collections and medical judgments to increase. This will have devastating affects on credit scores, driving them below the minimum acceptable credit score needed to buy a house. Medical judgments, just as all other judgments must be paid off, before a person can obtain a mortgage. This could increase the amount of money some people will need to complete their transaction, at a time when it is already difficult to save, and it will prevent otherwise qualified people, from being able to obtain a mortgage altogether. That also means less people to buy homes, a longer buyer's market and lower home prices.

Secondly, if people have less discretionary money to spend, they will spend less, and if people are not spending employment and the economy are negatively affected. Here is the effect of that. In order to coax people into spending more companies must reduce prices, which thereby reduces their profit margins, which will make companies less stable and more vulnerable to failure. If your company fails, I don't care if you were the Director of HR, Vice President of Production or the Senior Vice President of Marketing, if you don't have a job, if don't have a company sponsored insurance plan and you will need and you will want insurance, you'll want that public option, also.

And finally, we have to start realizing nothing operates in a vacuum anymore. Every action or inaction has consequences. Healthcare affects employment, employment affects homeownership, homeownership affects retail sales, retail sales affect company profits, company profits affect a company's ability to provide healthcare benefits. Everything is interconnected.

Greg Luchey is a licensed mortgage professional and loan originator in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, a liability management advisor specializing in mortgage planning, the owner of The Strategic Homeownership Center and branch owner of Christensen Financial's South Carolina mortgage brokerage office, radio commentator and author.

Mental Health Care Coverage in Minnesota - Supplementing Federal Healthcare Reform

In 2007, the governor of Minnesota proposed a mental health initiative and the legislature passed it. One of the more important components of the initiative was legislation amending Minnesota's two programs for the uninsured - General Assistance Medical Care and Minnesota Care - to add to the comprehensive mental health and addictions benefit.

Who Is Covered?

General Assistance Medical Care covers those with income at or below 75% of the federal poverty level who meet one or more of additional criteria known as General Assistance Medical Care qualifiers. Qualifiers include waiting or appealing disability determination by Social Security Administration or state medical review team; or being in a homeless or live in shelter, hotel, or other place of public accommodation.

Minnesota Care covers children and pregnant women, parents, and caretakers up to 275% of the federal poverty level, except that parents and caretakers gross income cannot exceed $50,000. Single adults without children increased to 200% of federal poverty level by January 1, 2008 and will rise to 215% of federal poverty level by January 1, 2009.

What Services Are Covered?

For Minnesota Care, there are limits of $10,000 on inpatient care for any condition (physical, mental health, or addictions) for parents over 175% of federal poverty level and childless adults. For General Assistance Medical Care, inpatient benefits are fully covered. Both programs cover chemical dependency outpatient services. An intensive array of outpatient and residential mental health services are available.

What Is The Cost?

In Minnesota, the Medicaid Temporary Assistance for Needy Families population, General Assistance Medical Care and Minnesota Care are enrolled in comprehensive nonprofit health plans that are responsible to deliver and are at risk for the entire health benefit, including behavioral health. Adding mental health rehabilitative services (including adult rehabilitative mental health services individual and group rehabilitation services, assertive community treatment, intensive residential treatment and mobile and residential crisis services) to Minnesota Care was projected to cost $3.40 per person per month. For General Assistance Medical Care, which includes a homeless population, the cost was $7.01 per person per month. The additional targeted case management service was projected to cost $2.22 per person per month for Minnesota Care and $7.66 for General Assistance Medical Care.

The legislature appropriated a total of $1 million in additional state dollars in fiscal year 2008 and $ 3.5 million in fiscal year 2009 to add the adult rehabilitative services and case management in Minnesota Care. State funds previously targeted for case management were moved from the counties to the state in an amount of $4.4 million in fiscal year 2009.

What Led To Comprehensive Coverage?

The state collected data on the residents served by Minnesota Care, General Assistance Medical Care, and Medicaid managed care plans serving non-disabled populations, and discovered that an increasing number of individuals with serious mental illnesses were in these plans. Several insurance reforms - similar to those included in the national healthcare reform bill - modified the private market, including guaranteed issue in small and large group plans, broader rate bands, parity for mental health and chemical dependency services, medical loss ratios, high risk insurance pool, and others. A lawsuit by the attorney general called attention to health plan denials of payment for court-ordered treatment, for example for civil commitment or out of home placement for adolescents.

Health plans settled with an agreement that behavioral and mental health benefits would be covered by a health plan if the court based its decision on a diagnostic evaluation and plan of care developed by a qualified professional. In addition to the court-ordered services provision, the state contracts and capitation with prepaid health programs (Minnesota Care and General Assistance Medical Care) were amended to align risk and responsibility for services in institutions for mental illnesses, 180 days of nursing home or home health, and court-ordered treatment. There were also highly successful experiments reducing costs and improving outcomes for commercial and non-disabled Medicaid clients who were offered a more intensive community based mental health service that improved coordination with and linkages to behavioral healthcare, primary care, and other needed services.

These demonstrations produced a positive return on investment - $0.38/person/month - and gave the health plans tools to manage the increased risk that resulted from several insurance reforms, including parity, a statutory definition of medical necessity, and the court-ordered treatment provision.

The state supported comprehensive coverage because it sought to provide mental health and addiction services in Minnesota as part of mainstream healthcare. Minnesota's mental health agency and other stakeholders desired to move mental illness from its historical treatment as a social disease requiring social services to an illness like any other. They wanted to foster earlier interventions and avoid shifting enrollees among different programs in order to access specific services. Operationalizing this change required rethinking medical necessity determinations, provider credentialing, contracting, procedure codes and other processes common to private insurance plans.

How Did It Get Through The Political Process?

Three factors significantly contributed to the political viability of a benefit expansion in the Minnesota Care and General Assistance Medical Care programs:

>> The governor of Minnesota and the administration provided strong leadership. The provisions to expand the mental health benefits in these plans were part of the governor's mental health initiative, set forth in advance of the 2007 legislative session.

>> An extremely strong coalition of stakeholders formed a mental health action group. This group is co-chaired by a representative from the department of human services and included representation from the private insurance industry and organized and knowledgeable advocacy and provider communities.

>> There was strong support in the legislature for the expansion of benefits in Minnesota Care and General Assistance Medical Care, including from a member of the finance committee in the house, who has a son with schizophrenia. The creation of a mental health division in the health and human services policy committee also helped move the policy discussion forward.

Why Does This Approach to Healthcare Reform Work?

A recent survey of community behavioral health organizations found that on average, 42% of reimbursement for services came from private insurers. While this represents the average, the survey found that there was quite a range in reimbursement sources. For community behavioral health organizations that specialize in services such as Assertive Community Treatment or case management, Medicaid is the predominant reimbursement source, either through fee-for-service or managed care.

Reimbursement from private insurance and Medicaid managed care is uniformly better than Medicaid fee-for-service. In addition to higher rates, the private insurers and Medicaid managed care organizations have been willing to offer special contracts for packages of services for crisis care and hospital discharge plus aftercare.

Linda Rosenberg is the president and CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare. TNC specializes in lobbying for mental and behavioral healthcare reform. Lean more at http://www.thenationalcouncil.org.

Health Savings Accounts Put You in Control of Your Healthcare

As Health Savings Accounts grow in popularity, there is growing fear among those who want to nationalize healthcare that they will not be able to put the cat back in the bag. There are already over 3 million HSA owners, and by 2010, the Treasury Department estimates as many as 45 million Americans will be covered by HSA plans. They will have billions of dollars invested to cover future medical expenses, and by then it will be politically impossible to take that benefit away.

If you currently have a high-deductible health insurance plan, you can invest tax-free money in a Health Savings Account. You get to choose the type of investment - anything from savings accounts or money market funds, to a full brokerage house. If you invest wisely, you could have well over $500,000 in the account when you retire. You will be able to use that money to pay for your healthcare in whatever way you please, tax free. You can go to the best surgeons, or the least expensive doc-in-a-box. If you decide to treat a condition with acupuncture, homeopathy, or psychic healers, you can do that too. Whoever offers you the service you want with the best combination of quality and price should get your business. And since you are the one paying, it will be completely your choice. You have healthcare freedom.

If proponents of a single-payer system were to ever have their way, you would be at the mercy of a government bureaucrat when it comes to your healthcare. To see what this may look like, all one has to do is look at the state of health care in Canada, England, New Zealand, and the parts of Europe that have not yet abandoned single-payer systems.

Proponents of a single-payer system tend to point to Canada or England as countries that cover all their citizens with quality healthcare, while spending less money per person than the U.S. But if we look a little more closely, we see that these publicly financed health insurance systems are breaking down, the quality is low, and the costs can be quite high. Here's what Canadians have to deal with if they need medical care:

Long waits. Hundreds of Canadians go to Detroit and other U.S. cities every year for procedures like CAT scans, which they can obtain treatment in a matter of days. In Canada, the wait is typically six months. Currently 876,000 Canadians are on waiting lists for medical procedures.

Difficulty in getting life-enhancing procedures done. If a Canadian is having a heart attack, they will be treated right then. But if the surgery is considered "elective" (meaning that possible death is not eminent), the wait could be months or years. Average wait for cataract removal is 18 months. Average wait for a knee replacement is one year.

Increased risk of dieing. The average Canadian waits eight weeks to see a specialist, and another nine weeks before getting treated. This is even the case with conditions that are likely to get much worse if there is any delay in treatment. For example, the median time for a mastectomy is 14 weeks, enough time for the cancer to spread to other parts of the body. In fact, 28% of those diagnosed with breast cancer in Canada die from it, while the mortality ratio in the U.S. is only 25%.

Things don't look any better across the ocean. Each year the British National Health Service cancels 410,000 surgeries because of resource shortages. According to the London Sunday Times, there are currently over 1 million Brits awaiting elective surgery. Thomas Cook, a British travel agency, is even considering offering "sun-and-surgery" packaged trips to Indian hospitals for British citizens fed up with low standards and long waiting times for surgery.

The British and Canadian governments have the power to make healthcare "free", but they are unable to control its costs. So the costs become longer (and potentially fatal) delays, and fewer innovations.

It's not surprising when you think about what is happening. Universal health insurance systems always encourage over-consumption by patients, and such over-consumption always leads to financial crises. The result is inevitably broken promises about universal access and quality care. Because there are always limited resources, single-payer systems tend to overspend on primary care for the healthy, while denying more expensive specialist care to those with serious medical problems. This is because most people (voters) are healthy most of the time, and the sick and dieing are less likely to be able to organize into a political force.

What makes the United States such a great country is the "freedoms" we enjoy. Though our freedoms seem to be constantly under attack, there is still no nation in the world that has the freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, or the free markets that we have in the United States. As anyone who understands even a smidgen of economics knows, free markets encourage competition and innovation, which lead to lower prices and better quality.

Though the U.S. system of health care can not really be considered a "free-market", it is certainly much more free than any single payer system. Some of the benefits we see as a result of our current healthcare system include:

- U.S. medicine produces the best outcomes for virtually every patient, from premature babies to elderly cancer patients.

- American companies are the chief source worldwide of new treatments and procedures which each year are used to save millions of lives.

- U.S. medical training and research facilities are the best in the world.

Though Canadians might have to wait a year or two for hip replacement surgery, they can get the same operation done on their dog in less than a week. This is because veterinarians are competing for that business, finding innovative ways to deliver service more quickly and less expensively. Another example is laser eye surgery, a procedure that is rarely covered by insurance, so laser eye surgeons must compete on the basis of cost and quality. While costs for most medical procedures have been going up every year, the cost for this procedure has dropped by 80% over the past decade.

Unfortunately, U.S. healthcare policies still tend to limit competition, restrict consumer's freedom to choose, and discourage consumers from shopping for value. Thus, there are too few choices and there has been little attention paid to price and quality of service. The answer is clearly not more government intervention, but instead letting competition and the power of the marketplace drive down prices and increase quality and access to care.

Health Savings Accounts are the Solution

There is increasing recognition that third-party health insurance payers are actually a major cause of escalating medical costs and the decline in the quality of service. The increasing adoption of HSA plans has already begun to cause greater transparency and competition in the medical marketplace. There are now physicians available by phone, medical kiosks setting up in malls, doctors that accept only cash (and who charge significantly less), and others competing directly for the consumer's healthcare dollar.

Don't be fooled by the politicians who advocate a single-payer system, claiming their only concern is the uninsured. If a single body (such as a government bureaucracy) controls healthcare, they control one seventh of the national economy. And everywhere in the world that central control of the economy has been tried, it has been a colossal failure.

As public policy reforms centered on individual choice continue to gain wider footholds, the result will be greater prosperity, greater choice, and a better value for all. The culture of dependence and entitlement will begin to fade, as millions of individuals demand further policy reforms that will reinstate the values of freedom and personal responsibility that helped establish this great nation.

As more consumers turn to health savings accounts, the market will respond. Innovative providers will begin to compete more on price and quality of service, and those that provide the best value will get wealthy doing so. And all consumers will benefit.

By Wiley Long - President, HSA for America - http://www.health--savings--accounts.com. HSA for America makes it easy to learn about and set up a Health Savings Account (HSA) that best meets your needs. Please link to this site when using this article.

Healthcare, Bailouts and Becoming an American

The current economic crisis in America and around the world has been in all the prophesies from the Mayans, Nostradamus and the Bible, but do we have to accept our presumed fate, or can we become the creators of the solution?

The prophesies point to a calendar time that coincides with our present year and depicts the years 2009 through 2012 as being times of major transformation. If we haven't listened and learned from our mistakes; If we have moved away from God and toward greed, war, and hatred, then we can expect major catastrophes and probably a nuclear holocaust. As 2008 and a presidency winds down, we are seeing the initial smoke to this inevitable firestorm. But it doesn't have to be this way.

America has been the land of the free and the home of the brave. We fought a revolution to free ourselves from a king's bondage and mustered our strength to help friendly nations defeat pathological aggressors. We were, at one time, the champions of Liberty with the greatest economy and the highest hopes of achieving what many called the American Dream. That was before the failed conflict of Korea, and the larger failed conflict of Viet Nam.

World War II put Americans to work making airplanes. At the end of World War II, we greeted our heroes, rebuilt our families, painted our houses and woodwork white, got the newest Chevy, bought a television, and went back to work for corporate America. Our healthcare was taken care of by our employers, our pension plans formed with an assumption that a government plan, Social Security, would take care of us in our retirement, and our kids could go to college, learn how to pay back student loans, and become upwardly mobile in a career. We were strong and powerful, the greatest country in the world. We went to church. And we thanked God.

When North and South Korea began their war, benevolent America, who had sold planes and artillery to the Chinese, went to help South Korea fight China and the North. It was a fight against Communism. It was a conflict between socializing a country to dependence, and freeing a people to strive for excellence. No one won. A line was drawn and the conflict continued. America began to change. Those in power found ways to capitalize on conflict, making money, brokering deals, and maintaining a façade of high ideals and Western culture. The American people lost touch with politics and immersed themselves in I love Lucy and the Honeymooners.

Viet Nam was also a conflict between North and South, freedom and Communism. America sent advisors to both sides, and then sent sons and daughters to fight. Those who stayed behind rioted in our streets and grassroots movements were formed from the chaos; The women's movement, the Black movement, the Gay movement, and the Anti-war movement were all symbols of our internal struggle for identity and personal freedom. When our heroes came home, we spat on them and called them names. We painted our houses colors once seen in an LSD dream, traded television for heavy metal, and tried to lose ourselves in a marijuana cloud of detachment. Many stopped going to church. Many stopped tanking God.

The Women's movement became a struggle for equal pay, the Black movement a struggle for slave reparations, the Gay movement a struggle between the working and middle class, and the Anti-war movement a consistent belief. Corporate America stopped paying for all healthcare and offered co-pay plans. Pensions became less lucrative and transformed to individual retirement accounts to boost Wall Street and provide a false sense of security. Those in power, once again, capitalized on the dichotomy in America and abroad by brokering deals and aiding the pharmaceutical and oil companies so they could make more money. Americans, after all, were getting sick more often, driving more miles to find work, heating larger homes, and losing more of their paychecks to the government.

Television and radio became propaganda machines for anything and everything considered decadent, and American dealmakers began importing more products to feed the masses while discovering they could make more money by exporting jobs to other countries. Over the counter drugs manufactured here and abroad began filling the grocery shelves as Americans suffered from stress, headaches, backaches and the Asian flu. Health care costs began a steady climb as technology became the main instrument of diagnosis and treatment.

Oil and drug companies were producing at record rates, and dumping their leftovers into lakes, streams and buried fields. Nuclear energy was more developed, and the waste from new plants was buried beneath new housing projects and schools. Americans were getting sicker and their children were dying. Those in power capitalized on this trend once again by allowing drug lobbyists in Washington to dictate policy. Congressmen and women followed the lobbyists, and then left to work for the corporations and to garner extraordinary paychecks. Senators and congressmen made sure they had special health care plans, affordable and inclusive, while the average American struggled to put food on the table after paying medical bills. The water used for bathing and drinking was now filled with more than seven hundred different chemicals, most of them toxic and carcinogenic, and Americans were getting sicker.

By 1979, brokered deals, weapons, and secrets had been shared with enough countries to allow fanatics to begin a different kind of war against Christian and powerful America. And by 2001, these same fanatics found a way to use American airplanes, the technology of a forgotten war, to begin the final destruction of a God-chosen superpower. The USA was ready to fight back, to once again take on evil for their country, and many heeded the call. But fear and distrust, a media machine bent on anti-American messages for personal gain, and corporate greed that reached into every pocket, became a dominant theme. Anti-depressants were the new drug, television sex the new past time, and music filled with hate the constant hypnotic.

America is undergoing a dramatic shift in healthcare. The cost of going to a regular MD or hospital is getting more and more expensive. Greed is not the only reason for these expenses. Medical malpractice lawsuits, medical insurance for risky procedures, pharmaceutical drug reactions, deaths with accompanying lawsuits, and expensive diagnostic equipment, are all escalating the cost of health care to the consumer.

Health insurance, once a perk offered by small and large businesses and corporations, is becoming a thing of the past. Large corporations such as General Motors complain that health insurance for employees cost them more per year than steel does for the cars they make. American unions drive up the cost of making cars, and American carmakers end up on the brink of bankruptcy, flying to Washington, D.C. in expensive corporate jets and asking for hand-outs. Consumers are being forced into providing their own, expensive health insurance, and have not yet gotten away from the mindset that health insurance should cover everything. Car insurance doesn't pay for cigarette burns on the upholstery or spilled chocolate shakes on the floor mats, but consumers have been used to employers picking up the tab for health insurance and expecting that insurance to cover every hangnail or headache. Those changes and the increased costs have moved consumers to seek more preventive care and alternatives to traditional, expensive procedures. Alternative medicine is often less expensive, equally or more effective, and produces less harmful side effects, as was evidenced by the flurry of pharmaceutical drugs the last few years that were finally removed or banned after being prescribed to hundreds of thousands of patients. People's trust in Western medicine is diminishing, and their relief in finding alternatives is rising. Major institutions are now doing large numbers of studies on alternative medicines, including herbal remedies, bodywork, meditation, dietary changes, and many others. Randomized, controlled studies are available on almost every type of alternative healing practice, and they typically show good results.

High-deductible policies and Health Savings Accounts allow people to have Western medicine waiting in the wings when they have serious health problems that require expensive drugs, tests, and surgery. But until then, they are able to use alternative medicine as the best service for prevention and smaller day-to-day health problems. Alternative medicine provides a "first line of defense," while Western medicine provides the expensive, dangerous, but necessary backup. We will always need the surgeon. It is the physician that we seek.

The internet and World Wide Web have become the main resource for consumers searching for health answers, but there is a tremendous amount of misinformation about healthcare on the Internet. Much of it comes from well-meaning entrepreneurs duped into a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme who try to pitch some health elixir or treatment.

A second source of health misinformation comes from the Western medical establishment seeking to discredit alternative medical therapies that could take significant revenues away from their invested therapies.

A third source of misinformation comes from the anecdotes of individuals who experienced relief from one therapy or another, but who do not (and cannot) actually represent a proven cure to a particular health problem.

The reason people are turning to the Internet in such numbers is due to a lack of trust in existing medical institutions. Doctors are viewed with suspicion. Will my doctor let me die by not revealing an alternative therapy that could help me? Does my doctor even understand what alternative therapies are? Is my doctor truly holistic, or is he just saying that to keep me as a patient? Is my doctor getting kickbacks from the cute, young, female pharmaceutical rep who visits him twice a month? Big medicine has become big business, and the number one concern is no longer the patient, it's dollars and cents. But hospitals and doctors are not the only things that Americans distrust.

People in government and in society seem to feel that some brand of socialized medicine will be the magic solution for America's healthcare problems. Socialized, universal healthcare will not work in America, and Americans know it. America needs to find a way to insure every single person in this country, but socialized medicine is not the cure for this illness. Forget the cures. Find the cause.

All of the problems mentioned here are symptoms. The cause of the crisis in health care lies in the disempowerment of the people and the failure of people to take responsibility for their health. Alternative and holistic health options have been feared and denied, but doctors will soon have no choice. Consumers are demanding prevention and alternatives, and western medicine is slowly integrating these therapies. Health insurance will eventually be a thing of the past as people stay well or discover alternatives to illnesses. Hospital costs will be forced lower as only surgical emergencies and back-up therapies will be incorporated. Pharmaceutical companies and their related agencies will no longer drive Congress to do their will as people realize pills are not the answer.

The changes will be uniquely American, but only if Americans claim their heritage and begin acting like Americans. We need to remember that we are what make America the land of the free. The Declaration of Independence was never intended to make us dependent on the government. The free enterprise system was never intended to keep everyone poor, but equal. We have the freedom to choose, but are we still the land of the brave? Do we have the courage to truly change what we have helped to create? Do we need to be reminded that we are one nation, under God?

Becoming an American can stop the crisis, the bail outs, the hope of hand outs. Changing the health care system can be one of the biggest steps to renewed freedom.

http://www.earthwalk-usa.com