IT'S TIME FOR A 21ST CENTURY HEALTH REVOLUTION
By
Byron J. Richards, CCN
March 31, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
The cost for ObamaCare has many Americans trying to understand how we can foot the bill. It will connect millions more Americans to a sickness industry gone wild. States are realizing that the mandates within the legislation will force them to spend money through the Medicaid program that they do not have – and unlike the federal government states don’t have a Monopoly-style printing press. States are now making the effort to fight ObamaCare in court on points of constitutionality. I have an additional idea for the states that is certain to work: disband all the medical licensing boards. At once the runaway costs of the current health system as well as ObamaCare would be stopped, the quality of care would improve, the suppression of health-option competition would be eliminated, and a new Golden Era of healing would be ushered in.
Those clutching desperately to undeserved power and profits will cry fowl and warn of danger to the public health. Their arguments are shallow and worn. Truly criminal behavior by doctors, such as sexual abuse, can readily be dealt with by the regular court system. Standards of training and competency for the most dangerous of medical procedures, such as surgery, can be maintained by an alternate system of certification.
The fact of the matter is that medical licensing boards have forced a brand of Big-Pharma medicine on the American public that does not produce the result of health for a majority of people participating. To the contrary, millions are injured every year while costs skyrocket. It should come as no surprise that President Obama struck special deals behind close doors with the key players involved: Big Pharma, hospitals, and the AMA. Yes, the states do have the power to change everything by freeing themselves of the monopolistic rules and fraudulent practices behind the excessive use of drugs that is costing so much money. The federal government can do absolutely nothing to stop them. Without the licensing boards the whole fraudulent system comes tumbling down.
The Failing Paradigm of Western Medicine
Every American appreciates the ability of Western medicine to help them in a time of true need. Accidents, injuries, surgeries, acute illnesses, and other aspects of health will always be assisted by Western medicine – as appropriate. And wouldn’t it be nice if your doctor was actually free to help you with your health concerns rather than cram drugs down your throat.
The drug-based theory of Western medicine fails miserably in the prevention of disease and in the treatment of many common health problems faced by Americans ranging from depression to obesity, bone health, diabetes, and heart disease. There is a reason Americans pay twice as much for health care with far less to show for it compared to any other economically advanced country: our system is riddled with rampant fraud in the day-to-day practice of medicine.
The highly profitable Big Pharma-promoted scheme of an endlessly prescribed cocktail of over-priced drugs is all but dead – taking with it several hundred thousand Americans every year that are killed by its reckless application. Millions more are seriously injured requiring emergency treatment. Tens of millions find themselves consuming an ever-expanding list of dangerous drugs that do little more than suppress some of their symptoms, change numbers, and cause new undesired symptoms and health problems. As aging baby boomers look more critically at a system of health their parents trustingly accepted, the glaring lack of results casts a cloak of suspicion over a profession once revered.
In the early decades of the 20th century the quick-fix invention of antibiotics sealed the fate of the naturally-minded eclectic physicians, setting back principles of natural health an entire century. Today, 48,000 Americans are killed every year by superbugs that have resulted from the overuse of antibiotics.
In the past decade numerous high profile medication disasters have irreparably ruined the image of the Western medicine brand. The first tremor to shake the foundation occurred in August of 2001 when the statin Baycol was pulled from the market after it was found to be injuring and killing excessive numbers patients.
Then, in July of 2002, a major magnitude earthquake rocked Western medicine. It was found that doctors had been seriously injuring and killing their patients with estrogen extracted from horse urine and synthetic progesterone. Data coming from the Women’s Health Initiative showed that this abnormal hormone drug combination increased the risk of invasive breast cancer by 26%, strokes by 41%, heart attacks by 29%, blot clots by 100%, and total cardiovascular disease by 22%. Based on the 6 million women taking these drugs in 2002 (2 billion in sales), the data suggested that during only one year there were an extra 4,800 cases of invasive breast cancer, 4,200 heart attacks, 4,800 strokes, and 10,800 blood clots – including 4,800 life-threatening blood clots in the lungs.
Numerous aftershocks followed: the painkiller Vioxx was estimated by FDA safety expert and whistleblower Dr. David Graham to have killed at least 55,000 Americans from heart attacks and strokes. Bayer’s heart bypass surgery drug Trasylol killed at least 300,000 people around the world including more than 20,000 Americans after the FDA knew it was a killer (while Bayer lied point blank to the FDA to hide dangers). A widely prescribed diabetes drug, Avandia, was found to increase heart attack risk by 43% in a patient population already at high risk for heart attacks (and still remains on the market).
The common use of antidepressants was found to be based on a fraudulent portrayal of benefit, when the facts show they are no better than placebo for the majority of people taking them. In fact, their use has been linked to an increased rate of heart disease and was recently linked to a 67% increased risk of death. The blatant poisoning of disadvantaged children, elderly in nursing homes, and now our military personnel with the off-label use of atypical antipsychotics has caused early death, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes while placating stress-related symptoms. It’s also worth billions to Big Pharma at mostly taxpayer expense and state Medicaid.
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The recent ACCORD trial has now shown beyond any doubt that the aggressive use of medications to change numbers in Type 2 diabetic patients so as to reduce cardiovascular mortality is a complete failure, either resulting in increased rates of death or far poorer health. In other words, the paradigm of Western medicine is unable to fix a problem at epidemic levels in America.
Bone drugs given to prevent osteoporosis are now shown to cause spontaneously breaking bones with long term use. And the statin drugs, the true kings of fraud, continue to speed accelerated aging and health decline in the tens of millions of Americans gullible enough to take them.
These are just some of the drug debacles, there are many others. At this point in time there is no reason for any person to trust anything a doctor tells them to take on a long-term basis in the name of health. Indeed, it is common knowledge that the FDA, which has failed to demand after-market safety testing on approved drugs, has no accurate idea of the true risk profile or effectiveness of any medication, including every blockbuster drug in regular use.
The common thread in all these situations is FDA blessings of the treatments by FDA bureaucrats, typically ignoring the warnings of FDA safety scientists. The dysfunctional FDA culture is often in a revolving door with the industries it is supposed to be regulating – to the extreme detriment of the health of Americans. Furthermore, all of the above mentioned drug scams include blatant illegal marketing activities by drug companies using a variety of strategies including ghostwriting studies, making up fictitious studies, bribing doctors, blacklisting naysayers, manipulating research universities, and major promotion of off-label use. The American Medical Association (AMA) is responsible for enforcing the drug sales through its licensing boards, which ensure doctors do the prescribing or else their livelihood is threatened with license revocation. It is a known fact that most doctors live in fear of their licensing boards.
A Brief History of Medical Licensing Boards
The roots of the AMA trace back to a meeting held in New York City in 1846. Twenty-nine elite doctors of the time wanted to establish a monopoly for their brand of medicine – what was to become Western medicine. Of course, the best possible monopoly is one enforced by the government. By the 1870s the AMA was having success within states at setting up medical boards under the façade of consumer protection. Their actual agenda was to eliminate all competition. AMA members manned state boards with police powers to enforce their decisions. This way they could exclude any practitioner from their group who didn’t practice their way as well as legally go after any practitioner doing anything other than their approved concepts.
By 1912 a complete medical monopoly was in place as the AMA, state boards of medical examiners, and a Federation of State Medical Boards to coordinate their activities was established. In essence this created a fascist merger of state and health-delivery power. Over the next several decades this abuse of power was wielded against the eclectic physicians, shutting down all their medical schools and wiping them out. Today it is wielded against homeopaths, midwives, chiropractors, nutritionists, and alternative health practitioners of all types. And very importantly, the power is used to keep all their members in line – which means prescribe costly and dangerous drugs in ever-increasing dosages to an ever-expanding target list of patients or lose your professional status and ability to earn a living. Who suffers? You – and now with ObamaCare the states are in real trouble.
Resurrecting Medical and Health Freedom
In order to restore health freedom and healthy competition in the health-care marketplace we actually need to remove police-force control, which is an impediment to the free market finding health options that actually produce the result of recovered or maintained health. Oddly enough the primary barrier to such improvement is the medical licensing boards of the states.
The first states to take action in this regard will be the big winners as doctors from around the country will flock to those states, like our founding patriots fleeing the tyranny of Great Britain. They will begin to practice medicine based on getting results and openly compete and cooperate with many other healing modalities. Other states will quickly follow as both doctors and people move to the states with the best system of healthcare – the system that actually makes people healthy.
States need to get a better handle on what is going down in America. State Attorney Generals and Governors need to side with the people of their state and strike a blow to the vast array of organizations that rely on the police power of the licensing boards to maintain an unhealthy and costly health business in America. In case you are wondering that includes HMOs, health insurance companies, Big Pharma companies, large pharmacy operations, chains of hospitals, along with the AMA. Rest assured the powerful lobbies of these groups will fight tooth and claw to keep their corrupt system in place.
If doctors are to be spared the indignity of appearing as little more than drug-pushing puppets squeezed by government-run healthcare, then we must remove the shackles from their hands – and from the hands of all other health practitioners.
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States can control their own financial destiny while improving healthcare. They can do it by shedding the monopoly rooted in the medical licensing boards. All it will take is a few states to blaze a path and then the floodgates will open. Health freedom should be the rallying cry for any American interested in reducing health care costs while improving health care quality.
