A solution to the sick care machine

A solution to the sick care machine I talk a lot about health and issues with the way things are run today. Fri, 02 Aug 2024 15:31:23 GMT https://healthandfreedom.substack.com/p/a-solution-to-the-sick-care-machine I talk a lot about health and issues with the way things are run today. But I am not one to just talk.

For the past 2+ years I have been working on iterations of different products to address some of these issues.

And today we released the alpha version of Upspace 3.0.

Literally imagine Spotify but for health. Instead of artists sharing music, health creators share content like workouts, recipes, meditations, and more.

One price for access to everything. For the first 100 early adopters it is free for life. The next 100 get it for a one time payment of $12.99. And after that, it is live and it will be $12.99/mo. As a thank you for reading this Substack, you can get early access to get it for free for life here .

Macro Problem As I have mentioned, $4.3T is spent annually in U.S. on health care. 80% of that is spent managing chronic disease.

Chronic disease includes things like diabetes, cancer, arthritis, heart disease, auto-immune diseases, etc.

That is because today 60% of the U.S. now has a chronic disease. In the 1960s, only 6% did.

What happened? We have more medicine, vaccines, and technology than ever before, yet our health outcomes are worse than ever before.

Maybe it is the focus on medicine, vaccines, and technology that are causing the problem?

We are biological creatures, not machines.

So we must align with our natural biological ways to achieve maximum health rather than inject artificial things into us.

This is common sense to me but the vast majority of the population has been tricked otherwise.

You save way more lives and lots of suffering by preventing a disease than by maintaining it. So why isn’t most our effort focused on preventing?

It’s clear to me why.

Industry has taken over. In 1910, the Flexner Report, funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, set the stage for the new world of medicine.

The Flexner Report transformed the nature and process of medical education.

I mean it literally when saying “transformed the nature.” It deemed natural health practices as “scientific quackery” and forced a centralized “science-backed” agenda.

But science is the observation and attempt of explanation of nature so how can you promote science while cutting out nature at the same time?

Regardless, the Flexner Report prevailed.

Spurred by Flexner’s report, the General Education Board (GEB) and later, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) called for a transformation of, and investment in, medical education in the US.

~ Rockefeller Archive Center

Keep in mind, Rockefeller founded the GEB with $1m in 1902 to standardize education across America. This gave him major influence over the education system.

And soon, universities that followed the Flexner Report received funding while universities that did not were defunded.

Two years later, the Federation of State Medical Board (FSMB) was founded to standardize medical licenses across all states.

With this, in order to become a licensed doctor you must go to a Flexner Report influenced university and follow a Flexner Report practicing standard.

Those who didn’t follow lost their licenses.

100+ years later and the medical curriculum is still based off of this report.

It is this system of standardized education and licensing is what gave rise to the diagnose and prescribe model we see today.

What was the motive? In 1910, the same year as the Flexner Report, William Burton, a Standard Oil executive, invented thermal cracking, a major breakthrough for the petrochemical industry.

With the Flexner Report, the diagnose and prescribe model became the common medical practice.

How are these related?

99% of all pharmaceutical drugs are derived from petrochemicals.

Out of thin air, Rockefeller gave birth to a new market that fed into his existing empire.

And today that market, healthcare ($4.3T), is now 4x the size of the petroleum industry ($1.1T) in the U.S.

A Vicious Cycle This infrastructure of standardized teaching, education, medical curriculum, and licensing created a vicious cycle that has given rise to lots of destruction.

Standardization is another name for centralization. And centralization is monopoly.

There is a reason Rockefeller’s Oil Monopoly, Standard Oil, was “split up.”

He still retained ownership in all 34 companies that it was split into haha.

Monopolies are known to be bad because they have no competition. And no competition means no accountability therefore giving them all the power to do as they please.

People follow incentives. And the more disconnected to the outcome of their actions the more destructive their actions become. (Ex. Us all using iPhones including myself even though they use child labor to make them).

This is why localization is so important. Every decision made by local leaders effects them more directly. Whereas for centralization, leaders only see the positive consequences and rarely effected by the downstream negative effects.

And this centralization of education, medical curriculum, and medical licensing is the system that gave rise to our health outcomes today.

To name a few:

60% of U.S. now has a chronic disease compared to 6% in the 1960s.

70% of the U.S is overweight compared to less than 20% in the 1960s.

50%+ of the U.S. report chronic loneliness which leads to 29% increase in premature death.

These were not intended but rather byproducts of a broken system.

$3.4T per year is spent on managing this chronic disease epidemic.

60% of the U.S. is on at least one prescription pill.

That’s a lot of motive.

This is not health care. This is sick care. And this sick care industry is incentivized to keep you sick because if you are healthy you don’t need them.

This has given rise to the ultra-processed sugar, vaccines with symptoms, medicines that lead to medicines, and other things that feed into this sick care machine.

It has given space for propaganda against natural healthy alternatives.

It encourages fear mongering, the number two motivator behind hope. And this fear leads to more sickness.

But there is hope And the number one motivator is hope.

Leaders are rising up across the world.

Podcasters, athletes, politicians, and entrepreneurs are taking the initiative to heal the world.

It is becoming more known that the only way to fight this sick care industry is to prevent sickness in the first place.

And the way to do that is through a proactive approach to health. The proactive approach requires us to be more human.

Alongside nature and the elements (air, water, earth, fire/sun) things like movement, mindfulness, breath, and nutrition are the most healing forces.

And thousands are leading the way sharing content online giving actionable ways to heal. These include workouts, meditations, healthy recipes, and more.

Micro Problem: holistic health is disjointed. There are millions of workouts, meditation, recipes, etc. shared online but it is scattered throughout.

This makes it overwhelming to us. Like finding the sentence you liked in the massive book you just read, it can be hard to find the recipe you liked that you saw online.

To have resources for your holistic health you need to download like 6 apps. One for strength training, running, meditating, breathwork, recipes, etc.

And since there are so many options it is likely that you have a different 6 than your friends limiting the fun in sharing with them.

It reminds me of music before Spotify. There were still millions of songs available. They were just scattered all throughout. You’d have to buy and download a CD or purchase each individual song from iTunes. And if your friend didn’t have it, they’d have to purchase it to or not share in the experience with you.

Holistic health content is similar to this today.

Solution The solution to sick care is simple in words - prevent sickness - but hard in practice.

The practice requires the holistic health solutions as mentioned above. But they are less useful and accessible if they are so scattered throughout.

So as Spotify did the music, Upspace is doing to health.

And we believe by doing this, we can greatly contribute to the end of the sick care machine.

With Truth & Love,

Shaughnessy

P.S.

Get lifetime free access to Upspace here .