Leading up to the 2012 election, ANH-USA will reach out to all candidates running for president and ask them real questions about natural health and where they stand on issues that are important to ANH-USA members. Our first interviewee asks, “Where is the profit in healthy people?”—a question that goes to the heart of many of our current health problems.
Gary Johnson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico, founded one of the largest construction companies in the southwest. During his time as governor, he pushed an anti-tax and anti-bureaucracy platform and vetoed more bills than the other 49 governors combined. He’s known as a fitness expert who has climbed Mount Everest and takes part in Ironman Triathlons. Gary Johnson announced his candidacy for president last month.
ANH-USA and its members believe that we don’t have a healthcare system in the US; we have a pharmaceutical-profit-driven “sick-care” system. How would you help change the paradigm and get the country on a real path to health and wellness?
I often point out that our current healthcare system is the least “free” of practically any component of our supposed free market system. Every step of the process, from what we eat and drink to the pharmaceuticals we are prescribed to the treatment options we face, is regulated in some fashion by bureaucracies—both government and corporate. In contrast, I am a firm believer that most people, if free to do so, will ultimately make the best decisions about their own well-being. Thus, my approach is to remove obstacles to free choice in a free market, thereby allowing the consumer to demand products and treatments that promote wellness, health and real preventative care. The system we have does just the opposite.
Why are so many natural and integrative health options not covered under insurance plans, even though they’re frequently less costly and more successful? What would you do to change that?
When government regulates, the inevitable result is policy that creates winners and losers. And whenever government creates winners and losers, those with the most clout and the loudest voices tend to prevail. In any industry as highly regulated as healthcare and insurance, that unfortunate tendency always filters down into the corporate cultures as well. I believe the institutional biases against natural health options are the direct result of a system that has picked winners and losers. Changing that requires a leveling of the playing field in which, again, consumers are picking the winners—not institutions.
There was a lot said on both sides of the healthcare reform debate last year, but if you ask natural health supporters, there was a third way that was completely left out of the debate. Why do you think natural health was left out of the debate? What can we do to make sure our side is heard?
Despite the rallies, bus tours and protests that occurred, let’s be honest. The process that resulted in the healthcare “reform” law was much less of a debate than it was a negotiation among massive vested interests. Those of us on the outside of that negotiation didn’t even have an opportunity to know what was in the so-called reform, and there was no room at the table for advocates of truly innovative or game-changing ideas. After all, where is the profit in healthy people?
At the end of the day, however, politicians’ self-preservation depends not on institutions, but on people who vote and make themselves heard. ANH-USA is on the right track toward mobilizing the millions of Americans who support natural health and wellness, and once the “system” is awakened to the fact that those millions of Americans are watching and voting, I suspect there will, indeed, be a seat at the table.
We asked our Facebook fans if they had a chance to ask a presidential hopeful a question, what would they ask. This question was the most popular: “Would you be willing to feed you and your family ONLY genetically modified food from now until you are out of office? If not, why should we be expected to eat it?”
I would absolutely not be willing to feed myself and my loved ones only genetically modified food, and I am equally opposed to expecting anyone else to do so. As an advocate of personal choice, I would also defend the right to choose to eat whatever kinds of food one wants—without those choices being limited by the government or the distorted, constrained marketplace it has created.
If our readers want to find out more about you, where can they go?
Our campaign is entirely about giving voice to the ideas of limited government intrusion in our lives, protecting individual freedom, and revolutionizing America with a large dose of common sense. ANH-USA members and supporters are an important part of that effort, and I encourage all to climb on board. Visit our website: www.garyjohnson2012.com.
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You would find Ron Paul would give the same answers to these questions.
Ron Paul may be right on this issue but he’s wrong on too many others to get my vote. So far I like Gary Johnson, but I’ll visit his web site and read more before I give up my vote over a single issue.
Gary Johnson has my vote!
Illness-Maintenance-Syndrome can be replaced by telling the Pharm team that is what is happening, Not Negotiable.
Imagine a country where legal drugs kill more people than illegal drugs PLUS the drug war. It’s ridiculous, and it’s iatrogenic (nightmarish web-search).
Check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Gary Johnson has spoken out with them as well.
I strongly support Gary Johnson’s efforts to change the focus of healthcare for the people. When I met with President Clinton while in office, I convinced him to increase the budget for the National Institute of Health to focus on prevention and curing illnesses rather than spending money on treatment. He passed this law in Congress. Unfortunately, the other Presidents have not focused on prevention and cure rather than treatment.
Sincerely,
Dr. Richard Edlich
I am just not interested in any person who calls themselves a Republican. They have practically destroyed America and they have held us back from being the great country could be or have been over the years. It is hard for someone as old as I am to think of even one program that has helped ordinary Americans, and that was Teddy Roosevelt probably!!!!!!!!!
“I am a firm believer that most people, if free to do so, will ultimately make the best decisions about their own well-being.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is most Americans don’t make very good choices, and because our “system” rewards those who do not have our people’s best interest in mind when they create food products, this is not likely to change until emphasis is put on changing the incentive system in the American capitalist system. We live in a profit driven world now, and everything produced by the companies that serve up crap and call it food, should be highly suspect.
Who’s strong enough to go up against big pharma and the huge amounts of MONEY that motivate our decision makers? We need a check up from the neck up.
So consumers aren’t smart enough to make the right choices? Who should do it then? You? The government? Right now you obviously think it is the corporations who make the choices for us, and largely they do. Except they do so through the long arm of the government, and this is why Johnson’s ideas are better than either Obama or Romney. He wants to cut out corporate influence on the government, by getting rid of the massive subsidies given to corporate farms that produce the crap most people eat.
There is a reason corporations target the Federal government to help sell their wares, its because right now the government has the power to do so. So long as we leave this massive amount of central power in place we will never have a secure, wholesome food supply. Big agri has ran roughshod over this country since the Great Depression when FDR seized the powers to regulate who grows what and how much they can grow. It has nothing to do with the very, very recent ruling that corporations are “people” although that certainly needs to go as well.
Government should never be about taking away from the rights or making rights unlawful to suit the government and diminish the average American citizen with too many over reaches into out loves, decisions and money.
Natural health in America is a real choice and not for sale or intrusion by the long-arm of the US government.
Natural health is all I ask for. I would have died from my strokes without it.
Gary Johnson has impressed me thus far. Only he and Ron Paul (the libertarians) talk reality these days. All other Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same big government, jingoistic military coin.
He is speaking like a typical politician. If he got elected I don’t see him doing anyting to change the “status quo” of *sick-care* in this country.
Gary Johnson is a huge proponent of amnesty, he is outspoken about his intentions to legalize 30 MILLION (he also restates the lie that there’s 11-12 million) illegal aliens running rough shod across America.
That’s all I need to know, it’s a deal breaker.
I can see Governor Johnson has libertarian beliefs….which is very good for natural health and ANH.
The ANH questions were poorly designed…they were vague..allowing vague answers. ANH should ask much better questions of the rest of the candidates…most are not libertarians..and will be able to give misleading answers if asked the same questions.
Ask:
Will you demand disclosure at the point of sale for:
GMO ingredients
BPA contamination in food products and other products, consumers are exposed to (sales receipts)
Mercury in amalgam dental fillings
Mercury and aluminum in vaccines
Milk produced by cows fed bovine growth hormone
ratings for sanitary/humane treatment of animals used for food
Do you support freedom of choice to allow cancer victims to choose alternative health therapies and freedom for alternative health practitioners to offer such therapies.
Do you support freedom of speech for commercial speech for vitamin and supplement manufacturers…subject to ban and penalty only after the government has proved in a court of law that their speech is fraudulent.
AS for Governor Johnson…I would support him if he wasn’t a free trade idiot…unfortunately some libertarian beliefs are very unrealistic and impractical. Please go to his website and echo that sentiment (without calling him an idiot ! ) See
http://simplynatural.blogtownhall.com/2011/04/08/wholistic_libertarianism.thtml
for a practical libertarianism
He did not really answer the questions. How do you get a level playing field when the multinatiional corporations have billions of dollars to influence laws? First, you have to get rid of corporate influence. Overturn the laws that says corporations have rights. They are not people therefore they have no rights only charters and that charter should be yanked if they engage in activities which undermine the public good. Pass laws against the revolving door between corporations and government agencies. Get rid of substities to the corn, soy and wheat industry. People eat crap food because it is cheap and it is cheap because the governments support it. All the blather about freedom is just a cover for letting the corporations run the country.
I dont like Johnsons answers. Making the marketplace more “free” and giving consumers more “choices” is code language for allowing big pharma and the food corps to make dangerous, harmful products, and lie about them. Part of the problem is that the disease care system is already too driven by market forces. Johnsons ideas will make it worse.
Correct. A free market is a market that allows food corporations to use harmful ingredients and practices and lie about them.
All markets have rules. Johnson is evasive and gives only general answers designed to sound good to everyone.
It sounds like Johnson is OK with corporations pushing GMO foods, irradiation, dangerous food additives and unregulated pesticide use. Why exactly is this in the interest of natural health?
A free market is a market that allows food and pharma corporations to produce dangerous products, and lie about them.