Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Voice for Hope is orga­niz­ing a Capi­tol Hill rally of alter­na­tive care providers and sup­port­ers in early Feb­ru­ary. Come and meet with your Con­gress per­son and their health pol­icy staff. Stand up for alter­na­tive care. Now is the time! I’ll be there and I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing you on the Hill.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing this blog and you’re a mem­ber of the More Health Less Care Alliance, you know that I believe “alter­na­tive care” has a lot to offer Amer­i­cans.

Our tra­di­tional health­care sys­tem is badly bro­ken.  Per­verse incen­tives are a major part of the prob­lem.  High-tech, high-cost and high-risk treat­ments are pro­moted over much sim­pler mea­sures.

The big health­care machine rolls on down the field, push­ing alter­na­tive providers to the side­lines.

But wait, maybe there’s a chance for alter­na­tive heal­ers to get in the game.  The his­toric con­gres­sional elec­tion last Novem­ber enabled today’s Con­gress to revisit the Afford­able Care Act in a process that I like to call “reform of health­care reform.”

Less than three weeks ago I posted my “Four Prin­ci­ples for Reform of Health­care Reform,” and num­ber 4 was to include alter­na­tive care.  American’s don’t want two sep­a­rate provider sys­tems any­more!

So you can imag­ine how delighted I was when Wash­ing­ton D.C. attor­ney Jim Turner told me about Voice for Hope, an orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing alter­na­tive care to Con­gress.  Their mis­sion is:

To advance the well­be­ing of human­ity by ensur­ing that pro­duc­ers, prac­ti­tion­ers, and con­sumers of com­ple­men­tary, alter­na­tive and inte­gra­tive health and well­ness ser­vices and prod­ucts have mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in the devel­op­ment of pub­lic pol­icy, through edu­cat­ing pol­icy mak­ers and the gen­eral pub­lic and pro­mot­ing the rights of indi­vid­ual con­sumers and their fam­i­lies to infor­ma­tion, access, redress and choice.

Now that’s a mis­sion I can really get behind.  Per­haps, like me, you’ve never been that polit­i­cal.  Well, now is the time to get seri­ous about pro­mot­ing change.

Do you believe in alter­na­tive care?  Have alter­na­tive meth­ods helped you?  Are you an alter­na­tive care provider?  Then join Voice for Hope — now!  Let your voice be heard in the debate on reform of health­care reform.

Help us tell Con­gress that we need more health and less care, and let’s make it clear how much the alter­na­tive care com­mu­nity has to offer.

Voice for Hope is orga­niz­ing a Capi­tol Hill rally of alter­na­tive care providers and sup­port­ers in early Feb­ru­ary.   Come and meet with your Con­gress per­son and their health pol­icy staff.  Stand up for alter­na­tive care.  Now is the time!  I’ll be there and I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing you on the Hill.

Not sure you can make it to the rally?  Here are three things you CAN do:

1. For­ward this post to all alter­na­tive care providers and sup­port­ers you know.  For that mat­ter, send it to your polit­i­cally minded friends as well.
2. Join the More Health Less Care Alliance as a pub­lic or pro­fes­sional mem­ber.
3. Join the Voice for Hope and make a con­tri­bu­tion to the cause — all con­tri­bu­tion lev­els are grate­fully accepted.

Thanks for your sup­port!