**Note: We are republishing each of the 22 challenges from Catherine’s fiscal cliff article – one a week. Helps to digest them bit by bit!**
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Federal laws and regulations encourage or require practices affecting nutrition, health and pharmaceuticals that significantly and adversely impact the health and well-being of the general population, causing heath care costs to explode, resulting in economic stress and damage to households and small business. These issues along with an aging baby boomer generation are at the heart of the politics surrounding Social Security and Medicare.
Catherine on Federal Health Care Policy in 2010:
If you want to understand the fundamental problem with the American health system, watch my favorite food documentary, “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.”
Australian Joe Cross heals himself of an autoimmune disease on a juice fast as he drives across America, engaging with the people he meets about diet and nutrition. At a truck stop in Arizona he meets Phil Staples, an Iowan trucker with the same autoimmune disease.
Persuaded by Joe, Phil starts a juicing regimen and within six months is also healed, along with losing half his body weight and transforming into the picture of vibrant health. Near the film’s end, Phil sits with his brother who has just returned from the hospital as part of his recovery from a heart attack. Juicing costs $14 a day with conventional vegetables, $28 a day for organic. Phil’s brother’s heart attack cost $55,000. He sits and describes his pile of pharmaceuticals to Phil. It is relatively easy to add up the dramatic difference in health care costs between Phil and his brother resulting from a their vastly different diet and lifestyle choices.
The deterioration in the quality of the food and water supply is a driving force in exploding health care costs, particularly as the baby boomers age. See documentaries Obesity: Killer at Large and Sugar: The Bitter Truth and our interview on the Solari Report with Dr. Robert Lustig.
One of the most important factors is the increase of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the seed and food supply. See Jeffrey Smith’s documentary, Genetic Roulette, as well as our Solari Report interview with Jeffrey.
This is exacerbated by the deterioration of household purchasing power, forcing a significant number of people onto food stamp subsidy, where dependency on highly processed foods to achieve the necessary caloric intake within a limited budget is typical. The number of food stamp beneficiaries grew from 33,489,975 in fiscal 2009 to 46,609,075 in fiscal 2012. Over the same time period, according to the U.S. Treasury, spending on the program increased from $55.6 billion to $80.4 billion. This development is not unrelated to increases in regulatory and compliance pressures on small farmers, which in turn helps to consolidate agricultural profits into large corporations.
There are numerous additional factors as well:
- Environmental pollution, including a secret (albeit obvious) global spraying program. See Michael Murphy’s documentary, Why in the World are They Spraying? as well as our outstanding Solari Report interviews with Cliff Carnicom, Dr. Gwen Scott, Dr. Samuel Milham and Blake Levitt.
- Suppression of critical knowledge, such as the fact that expensive cancer treatments are not effective in many cases and that significantly less expensive treatments are available. Read Suzanne Sommers Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer or listen to our Solari Report interviews with Dr. Laura Thompson, Nora Gedgaudas or Lynette Louise.
- Suppression of technology prohibitively increases the cost of health care. For an excellent example of this phenomenon, see “The Rise and Fall of a Scientific Genius: The Forgotten Story of Royal Raymond Rife.”
- Vaccine policies result in babies and young children receiving significant dosages of heavy metals that lower immune systems and are believed to significantly increase the incidence of autism and other conditions that significantly increase household expenses and adversely impact household health and economics. See Gary Null’s documentary “Vaccine Nation.”
Truth Media Prodcution | 12 August 2012
To the extent that these factors are reducing life expectancy of older Americans, they may be also reducing some of the stress on the budget. A recent study shows that the life expectancy of the least educated Americans have fallen 5 years among women and 3 years among men since 1990. See here.
The issue of life expectancy is a critical issue for the federal budget. For many years, the baby boomer generation has been paying funds into the Social Security Trust Fund. Those funds have been used to purchase Treasury securities that have financed government operations (yes the Social Security Trust Fund has been spent). In short, the U.S. government needs a continual inflow of these funds to keep going. Now that the boomers are retiring or need Social Security payments to fund living expenses in the face of declining incomes, those cash flows are turning negative. This presents a serious problem. The government needs an inflow of the next dollar. Instead of getting that inflow, it is getting a request for a dollar. That is a $2 dollar problem. Where is it going to raise sufficient capital to finance the replacement of the inflow and to fund the outflow?
The pressure to implement higher retirement ages and to access private and public pension funds, including 401k’s and IRAs is growing.
