If my colleagues stop eating donuts and are more active, it saves me money on next year’s insurance premium, and I get to work with people who have more energy and creativity each day. Yet most organizations fail to make health a cultural priority. Instead, they treat healthcare like any other expense.
I have argued for years that we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease-management system – one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.
Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are – these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.
And the issues I think are important in Louisiana right now happen to be health care and education. And those are two areas that the federal government can play a very important role. And I think I can be effective in trying to help our state from the Washington scene.
When I talk about democratic socialist, I am talking about Medicare, a single payer health care system for the elderly. And in my view, we should expand that concept to all people. I believe that everybody in this country should be entitled to health care as a right.
I am of the view that the Affordable Care Act will be a transformative piece of legislation that can lower the cost of health care in the United States – perhaps our greatest fiscal obstacle – and help all Americans lead healthy and productive lives, free from worry that a single illness could mean ruin for an entire family.
Health is certainly extremely important, and we’ve done a number of things at Facebook to help improve global health and work in that area, and I am excited to do more there, too. But the reality is that it’s not an either-or. People need to be healthy and be able to have the Internet as a backbone to connect them to the whole economy.
The health of the planet is at stake, because the cruelty and the waste that accompanies the slaughter of billions of animals each year literally infects us all. We could consume healthy plant-based food produced at almost infinitely less cost. What does that say, really, about us and what we’re doing… to animals and to ourselves?
In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?
Social services, not wealth per se, seem to be the key to lower birth rates. The Chinese, although among the poorest peoples of the world, have brought their fertility rate down to 2.4, partly by social coercion, but mostly by broadly available education, health care and family planning.
Beyond ensuring that people everywhere have access to mental health, virtual digital assistants can act as learning companions, using their insight into what motivates and inspires you, to help you study and learn. In this way, AI could be used to level the playing field in education and help narrow socio-economic gaps around the world.
Since environmental and health damage is not factored into reducing GDP – and in fact the resulting health costs and the costs of cleaning up the environment would also inflate GDP, a GDP obsessed government would try and dismantle environmental and health regulations.
Natural gas obviously brings with it a number of quality-of-life environmental benefits because it is a relatively clean-burning fuel. It has a CO2 footprint, but it has no particulates. It has none of the other emissions elements that are of concern to public health that other forms of power-generation fuels do have: coal, fuel oil, others.
Great amount of scientific research is there to show that health is better because transcendental meditation deals with consciousness, and consciousness is the basic value of all the physical expressions. The entire creation is the expression of consciousness.
As we get closer to the end of this Congress, we should be addressing the urgent needs of the American people – the war in Iraq, affordable health care, a sensible energy policy, quality education for our children, retirement security, and a sound and fair fiscal policy.
The Supreme Court has never ruled that Congress can use the Commerce Clause to require individuals to engage in an activity they have chosen to avoid. Yet that is precisely what Obamacare does: It forces Americans without health insurance to purchase coverage. Such a requirement is unprecedented and unconstitutional.
Our Congress passes laws which subsidize corporation farms, oil companies, airlines, and houses for suburbia. But when they turn their attention to the poor, they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on the funds for Head Start, Medicare, and mental health appropriations.
I had the worst birthday party ever when I was a child because my parents hired a pony to give rides. And these ponies are never in good health. But this one dropped dead. It just wasn’t much fun after that. One kid would sit on him and the rest of us would drag him around.
Purpose has always been part of Unilever’s DNA. Our founder, William Lever, built a business around the sale of Lifebuoy soap that was not only profitable and sustainable but also helped transform the health of the poor in Victorian Britain.
All the evidence shows very clearly that if you are a member of a trade union you are likely to get better pay, more equal pay, better health and safety, more chance to get training, more chance to have conditions of work that help if you have caring responsibilities… the list goes on!
There’s this romantic idea that’s built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided.
We live in a country that sent people to the moon. This accomplishment, along with other bold leaps of faith, required political will, determination and imagination. Providing health care for all of our citizens requires the same force of will.
High-quality health care is not available to millions of Americans who don’t have health insurance, or whose substandard plans provide minimum coverage. That’s why the Affordable Care Act is so important. It provides quality health insurance to both the uninsured and underinsured.
Competition makes things come out right. Well, what does that mean in health care? More hospitals so they compete with each other. More doctors compete with each other. More pharmaceutical companies. We set up war. Wait a minute, let’s talk about the patient. The patient doesn’t need a war.
Extra weight – whether it’s physical, emotional, or spiritual – holds us back from our health and our potential. Overeating is a behavior caused by stress, depression, excitement, fun with friends, self-sabotage, and countless other feelings, emotions, and circumstances. There can always be an occasion to eat and overeat.
