Chronically Human Podcast

Steve Ariens joins us today. He is better known online as Pharmacist Steve. 

Steve has been a licensed pharmacist for over 50 years. He's worked at hospitals, nursing homes, and he owned and operated an independent pharmacy for 20 years.

Since retiring he has dedicated his time to documenting how the response to the opioid crisis has hurt chonic pain patients. This is is a personal issue for Steve as well, his wife has been a chronic pain pateint for over 20 years. 

We discuss the origins of the opioid crisis, who are profiting from it,  how those in pain are suffering from the government and corporate medicine's reponsed to it, and how government intervention into the healthcare market and specifically the War on Drugs, have led to many of the problems we are facing today. 

Check out his incredible blog at: 

http://www.pharmaciststeve.com

and follow him on Twitter as well as on Facebook

@Pharmaciststeve 

https://www.facebook.com/pharmaciststeve

You can check out the show notes at:

https://chronicallyhuman.co/2019/03/01/chronic-pain-and-the-opioid-crisis-with-pharmacist-steve/

Thanks for Listening and let us know what you think.

Brad Miller

The Chronically Human Podcast 

Dr. William Anderson joins us today. He  is a professor of economics at Frostburg State University, Senior Fellow at The Mises Institute and he’s been studying and writing about Austrian Economics since 1981. 

We discuss his latest article “AOC’s Green New Deal and The Great Leap Forward”. He explains why centrally planned economies  have never worked in the past and why they still won’t work today. 

You can find a complete timeline,  links and shownotes from this episode go to:

https://chronicallyhuman.co/2019/02/27/why-the-new-green-deal-wont-work-dr-william-anderson-chp-ep-17/ 

Dr. Anderson explains how The New Green Deal is based upon the same ideology of The Great Leap Forward in China, The Centrally Planned Economy of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq in 2003. All of these government actions are based upon the idea of collectivism, which is a political philsophy that believes individuals, whether in the U.S. or other countries, have no inherent natural rights. 

We discuss how those who are advocating for this plan to fundamentally change our entire economy, leave out the specifics of how it will be paid for, how the private property seized will be distributed and what will happen to those who disagree with their all encompassing utopian plans.

You can read Dr. Andrerson's article here:

https://mises.org/wire/aoc-and-green-great-leap-forward 

You can read for yourself The New Green Deal Proposal.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729035/Green-New-Deal-FAQ.pdf  

More information about The New Green Deal.

https://mises.org/wire/mmt-even-more-dubious-aocs-green-new-deal 

The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social program that the Chinese Communist Government implemented from 1958 to 1962. It led to the death of  an estimated 45 million people, mostly through starvation. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward 

You can find more of Dr. Anderson's work here:

https://fee.org/people/william-l-anderson/ 

https://mises.org/profile/william-l-anderson

You can find a timeline and links to the ideas, people and information discussed in this epsoide at:

https://chronicallyhuman.co/2019/02/27/why-the-new-green-deal-wont-work-dr-william-anderson-chp-ep-17/

Thanks for listening and let us know what you think. 

Brad Miller

The Chronically Human Podcast 

Dr. Leah Houston is our guest today. She is currently an Emergency Room doctor and co-founder of a company that's applying blockchain technology to help fix healthcare.

She is co-founder of HPEC.io which is a tech company that helps doctors to create self-sovereign identies on the blockchain. This helps to reduce costs, prevent fraud and put the control of a doctor's identity back into their hand's.

We discuss why centralization of healthcare is a threat to everyone's privacy and pockebook and how decetnralization can put the power back into the hands of the people. Dr. Houston and I discuss the history of Bitcoin, what is the blockchain, what are self-sovereign identities and how these technologies can cut healthcare costs, increase access and improve outcomes. 

We also talk about the problem with third party payers and how along with burdensome regulations are causing doctors to burn out, quit their practices or even commit suicide. 

Dr. Houston also relates why their is a doctor shortage and what can be done to fix it.

She belives that decentralization is one of the keys to fixing the healthcare sytem and helping to empower the individual to choose for themeslves how they improve their health and wellbeing.

You can find out more about her private pracrice and HPEC.io below:

http://leahhoustonmd.com

https://hpec.io

We also discussed the fact that the Practicing Physicians of America are suing over what they say is unfair practicies against the American Board of Internal Medicne which is restricting their right to practice medicine. Consider giving to help doctors fight back against unnecessary and expensive regulations that end up incresing costs and not improving outcomes. 

Practicing Physicians of America GoFundMe page - 

https://www.gofundme.com/practicing-physicians-of-america

.I'm grateful for Dr. Leah Houston for her time today and her work using blockchain technology to help decentralize healthcare and her work to promote more freedom and less top down regulation from both public and private entites who control many of our healthcare choices. 

On The Chronically Human Podcast we advocate for Medical Freedom. That is simply your individual inherent right and the inherent responsibilty to choose for yourself how you improve your health and wellbeing.

Thanks for listening.

Brad Miller

The Chronically Human Podcast 

Dr. Mary Ruwart joins me to talk about self-ownership, medical freedom and the seemingly radical idea of the Separation of Church and State.

You can follow her work at:

http://www.ruwart.com

Dr. Ruwart is a very warm, compassionate and intelligent person who truly believes, as I do, that the principles of individual liberty are the best ideas to organize a society upon.

We discuss her most recent book "Death By Regulation." http://www.ruwart.com/product/death-regulation Dr. Ruwart makes the compelling case that the increased FDA regulatory authority granted by the 1962 Drug Amendment Act has led to a stifling of innovation, the massive increase in drug costs and the death of nearly 15,000,000 Americans.

http://www.ruwart.com/blog/a-1962-law-slowed-drug-development-changing-it-could-slash-drug-prices.html

I've bashed big pharma many times in the past and our conversation made me reconsider redirecting the blame more toward the FDA and those laws that give it the authority which has created the modern drug industry.

We also discuss the concept of self-ownerships. This is the concept that you own yourself and that when the government tells you what you can and can't do they are violating this basic individual right.

Her take is that libertarianism or the repeat for individual rights is the compassionate way to organize society.

Dr. Ruwart was an early follower of Ayn Rand but felt there was something missing from her interpretation of individualism. She believes that humans have an innate need for other humans and that this is on the genetic level. And that charity and compassion are comparable with livery and help the person whose doing the helping more than those being helped.

Love thy neighbor is still valid today as it was 2000 years ago.

Dr. Ruwart also has a fascinating take on how government regulations are in fact a form of non-voluntary human experimentation that violates the ethical framework meant to protect people from being experimented upon without their consent. She is on the board of Institutional Review Board that is tasked with helping to insure that informed consent and certain guidelines are followed for human testing.

http://www.ruwart.com/blog/an-ethicist-asks-is-regulation-unethical-human-experimentation.html

During our conversation we also talk about the idea of The Separation of Medicine and State just as there is the Separation of Church and State. We discusses how both are based upon the same principle as self-ownership.

The topic of the opioid crisis came up as well. Dr. Ruwart shared her personal story of how she had to watch her sister with cancer needlessly suffering due to issues with the red tape around pain medicine. She also related how her sister became so ill and was in so much pain they decided together to go to Dr. Kervokian to end her life. A very powerful story and highlights how we need to change the laws to allow individual to exercise their inherent right of self determination and have painless, effective means of ending one's own life.

We had a great conversation about how we would all benefit from getting government out of your healthcare choices, the compassionate ethical side of libertarianism and how it's a matter of life and death when it comes to your medical freedom.

Thanks for tuning in. Let us know what you think about Medical Freedom.

Brad Miller

The Chronically Human Podcast

Judge Jim Gray is our guest today. He is a former prosecutor, a Judge in Orange Country California and best known for running as VP on teh Libertarian Presidential ticket in 2012. 

He talks about how to end The War on Drugs, the libertarian case for Universal Basic Income, and how competition can help fix healthcare and education.

Whatever your political beliefs maybe please take and listen and find out how the princples of freedom can be applied to the problems we all face. 

For the complete show notes go to: https://chronicallyhuman.co/2019/02/13/the-chronically-human-ep-12-judge-jim-gray/

Let us know what you think.
Brad Miller

The Chronically Human Podcast