American Healthcare: What Business Are Ye In?
Edited by Dr. Don Selvidge
A couple of PhD analysts write about what’s wrong with American healthcare in a recent edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. Their report, entitled "What Business Are We In?"
They analogously lead off their article by pointing to the Eastman Kodak Company that saw itself in the film business rather than the imaging business and after 131 years in business, filed for bankruptcy in January of 2012.
So they write: "The analogous situation in health care is that whereas doctors and hospitals focus on producing health care, what people really want is health. Health care is just a means to that end – and an increasingly expensive one. If we could get better health some other way, just as we can now produce images without film….., then maybe we wouldn't have to rely so much on health care."
The American People Fallen Sucker to Sales Pitch
But do we really see the end of doctoring? The American people have fallen sucker for the sales pitch, that America has the best healthcare in the world, and they want more of it, regardless of whether it works or not. Many Americans feel they paid into a system (Medicare) and they want what they paid for. They want the miracle drugs, the CAT-scans, the robotic surgery, all of it, as long as it doesn’t have to be paid out of their own pocket. They can’t imagine that that healthcare system cannot possibly deliver on its promises to provide more and more high-technology medicine to a growing population of aging Americans. There will be a default, call it rationing, but from a different quarter, as I will explain momentarily.
Modern medicine is the problem, not the solution.
Modern medicine is not going to take money out of its own hands. The solutions are going to come from an entirely different quarter. Neither did Kodak see the handwriting on the wall. The only way to reform medicine and bring down its obscene costs is to create alternatives, just like Kodak succumbed to digital cameras.
Income predicts health.
People with extra dollars can purchase better quality food, vitamins, and tend to be more literate and therefore savvy about producing health at home. The irony here is that the people who can least afford modern medicine tend to be its best customers, while wealthier and better educated tend to seek alternative treatments (think of Steve Jobs in his battle with pancreatic cancer).
Retirees take more and more problematic and ineffective medicines without recognizing these pharmacological elixirs are causing more problems than their diseases.
But contrast this with the recent revelation that 46% of American retirees solely rely on a Social Security check. Over-priced American healthcare stole their pay raises and left them penniless in their retirement! There is no freedom to choose. Most retirees have to take what Medicare pays for, and it certainly doesn’t pay for vitamin supplements or healthy food.
Greater advances in health status will come from improving the American food chain than in any doctoring.
There may be no way out of this mess short of altering the food chain, eliminating cheap sugars (high fructose corn syrup), taste enhancers (MSG), hormonized meat, hydrogenated fats, iron-fortified breakfast cereals, and cheap food that is centered on carbohydrates (pasta, rice, bread, beans). But don’t bet on Kraft or Archer Daniels Midland leading the way either. All the promotion of healthy foods is completely undone by TV advertising for snack foods. Pringles are not going to disappear.
Liberated American women are not given to the inconvenience of breast feeding. While an estimated 74% start out with good intentions, only 33% of moms exclusively breast feed at three months of age and only 14% exclusively breast feed at six months. The selection of an alternative to breast milk may doom a child’s future health. A recent study reveals that cow’s milk infant formulas provide an excessive amount of leucine, an amino acid that genetically re-programs a child towards obesity. Cow’s milk is intended to build a newborn calf into a 1000-pound cow.
How will modern medicine respond to this sad discovery? Will pediatricians warn mothers away from cow’s milk formulas? Don’t bet on it. Modern medicine will revel in the fact there is more disease to treat and collect more insurance money.
Less doctoring, not more. If you want to remain healthy you need to learn how to skirt around the present healthcare system.
To conclude, modern medicine is not going to recommend anything where it is shoved out of the picture. But that is exactly what needs to be done. Humans can be re-programmed to be healthy by their foods and dietary supplements, not doctor-prescribed drugs.
Will this happen? The Western disease-promoting diet can be changed.
September 3, 2012
Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.
Copyright © 2012 Bill Sardi Word of Knowledge Agency, San Dimas, California. This article has been written exclusively for www.LewRockwell.com and other parties who wish to refer to it should link rather than post at other URLs.
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