The Medical Freedom Channel

Can free-market healthcare really happen, given the essential Balkanization of political views in America? On so many issues, hardline positions on some aspect of the question have been preventing even civility from prevailing, let alone allowing the synergy of issue-based coalitions to form.

However, health concerns might finally be one of those areas where agreement across conventional barriers might actually become possible. The fact that we are all human, and all mortal, is starting to unite people who would normally cross the street to avoid confronting one another (or at the other extreme, be prepared to draw down at the slightest provocation?), around the concepts of wellness, self-responsibility and community-based and voluntarily funded healthcare.

Examples abound. In fact just in today’s (Tuesday) stories, right here in the Medical Freedom Channel, there are encouraging signs. The five commentaries are about vaccinations and mercury poisoning; the misuse of power in the AIDS battle (comparing it to the War on Iraq); the dangers of ADHD medications; the Massachusetts healthcare reform proposal; and … an advice column on healthy exercise in “pollen season.” Four out of five are current-event topics in the news today.

The irony is the sources of those four pieces …

The vaccination story comes, not from the expected “right-wing” sources, but from the progressive site, Common Dreams. Similarly, the AIDS story is from Lew Rockwell.com, normally seen as conservative or right-libertarian in nature, but taking a rather “progressive” view on this subject. And the other two are also unexpected: ADHD meds is attacked by a Sierra Times poster, while MassCare is under scrutiny from a columnist who normally splits time among the Boston Globe and more progressive sources like The American Prospect.

Where am I going with this? Essentially I am noticing more and more often that the traditional left-right schisms are blessedly beginning to fade, at least among those who truly do believe they are fighting a battle intended to increase liberty and allow freer exercise of our lives. It may well be that, even while the imperialist neo-cons (and the liberal-socialists who purport to “oppose” them) continue to have “slap fights” over how to divide their power – as the Leviathan state just keeps on growing and denying our liberties – a coalition of erstwhile enemies is forming around them, perhaps creating bridges that might end up leading us to a freer and healthier world in spite of the power-brokers. And it may also be that the healthcare issue might be the catalyst for creating this unity.

If progressives can be concerned about “purity of essence” and cry out against additives in vaccinations … If conservatives can be concerned about the impurities in our foods and embrace “natural healing” options … If there is common ground between the absolutist positions on birth control and emergency contraception methods, or on hospital clinics and health insurance …

What if healthcare issues turned out to be the thing that wakes up Americans, and others around the world who truly care about freedom and the right to make choices, and begins leading us to that brighter future we all say we want to create? What if the simple act of putting power battles aside, and focusing our attention on promoting self-responsibility, compassion for others and a sense of prosperity that knows that “there is enough” to go around … leads us to the free(r) society so many of us claim we really want?

We can dream … but we need to “move our feet” if we want to see it happen!