One major improvement to our current system that was not part of your list is medical malpractice reform. The personal-injury lawyers have taken advantage of our current system, and this is one of the major sources of our skyrocketing costs; significant reforms are needed. One suggestion includes legalizing and promoting “negative outcomes insurance.” According to Ron Paul, “Negative outcomes insurance is a novel approach that guarantees those harmed receive fair compensation, while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system. Patients receive this insurance payout without having to endure lengthy lawsuits, and without having to give away a large portion of their award to a trial lawyer.”

Also, we need to ensure that we keep the nutritional supplement market minimally regulated; pending legislation sponsored by John McCain threatens to drastically increase the costs of supplements, and begin to regulate many of them as prescription drugs. Such an approach would be a huge step in the wrong direction; it would move decisions from the individual consumer to their doctor, and would disastrously increase the cost of effective and safe over-the-counter treatments.

Since age 2 Daniel stands everyday in a upright stander. Easystand is his 3rd stander. He went from prone, to Rifton upright, then to Easystand. Within the last few years, he has been standing up to 3 hours a days, 7 days a week. He currently still uses his EasyStand 5000. The reason I don’t have any video of him in the EasyStand, because I made a lot of funky modifications to it to accomodate his needs. This includes putting an old Rifton Potty chair oversized-tray over the existing tray, because it is bigger and allow his elbows to be on it to hold him up standing better. Daniel has a youtube channel showing all the different things he does to prevent surgeries. He has 80-degree scoliosis and wears a TLSO.
I am just wondering how can someone like Daniel to be part of those studies to show standing is very important. To prove my point, since his public school would not allow him to stand upright, at 16, he only goes to school for 2.5 hr. He stands before and after school. He does everything in his stander.
You can see Daniel at his weakest when he is on the floor @ http://www.youtube.com/user/walkingdan#p/a/u/2/lDRlv2ldTLo.
You can also see the Easystand 5000 he uses at home in his slideshow on Youtube @ http://www.youtube.com/user/walkingdan#p/u/11/5_mJhV3CqXE
I really think Daniel is an good example of what the severe spastic-quad with Cerebral Palsy can be help with standing. Daniel only uses PT for consultation to acquire equipment. I do all his daily therapies.

As long as we rely on health insurance to cover every doctor visit and minor procedure, our health care costs will continue to increase – what would be the motivation for an individual not to maximize their use of these “free” services? We should work to restore health insurance to what it originally was: protection against catastrophic illness or injury; routine visits and procedures should be paid out-of-pocket by the individual consumer. This will make each person accountable for the services they use and would provide incentive among providers to reduce prices to affordable levels, rather than the current never-ending escalation of costs that are paid by insurance companies and not “felt” by the people using these services.