Health Care

Paul Richmond believes quality Health Care is a right.  He has lived first hand as someone with out health care, and done it while facing a medical crisis.  One of Paul’s first jobs out of law school was working bankruptcies, and he has seen that the medical industry was the cause of almost all these bankruptcies.  He has worked in the health care system and seen its abuses of patients.  He has supported alternative therapies, providing legal support to those receiving controversial treatments including medical marijuana.

As stated to the press at the outset of this campaign, Paul Richmond believes in Not-for-Profit, Single-Payer Health Care. Paul also believes that the medical system is in need of serious reform beyond method of payment. 

Often the care available in this country, even for the best price, does not deal with the underlying cause.  Typically pills are prescribed for symptoms, and other pills are prescribed for the symptoms of the first pills, and so on.  It is also why, for example, nutrition, one of the most basic components of health, is an optional class in almost every medical school in the country.  Treatments and supplements that are cheap and effective and available in much of the rest of the world, are not available here.  Simply adjusting the method of payment is not enough.

The medical industry that exists in the United States, was put in place at the time many of the monopolies in this country were formed.  This is why the dominant medical culture encourages dependence and little independent exploration. 

It is why many of the treatments that are given are not effective.   Many of the most effective treatments are outside the health care system or even outlawed in this country.  These include treatments for the most deadly illnesses including cancer and heart disease.

As with many other things in this country, the U.S. medical system suffers from monopoly and isolation.  Paul Richmond believes we could benefit immeasurably by implementing the sort of short, focused and in depth and objective study that was done in Taiwan.  In Taiwan they determined what did and didn’t work in the medical systems of the rest of the world.  After several months of assessment they restructured their medical system to incorporate these best practices.  If this sort of restructuring can be done in one of the most capitalistic economies in the world, there is no reason it can’t be done here.