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 Traditional
medicine clearly kills more people than it saves.
Prescribed drugs are the third leading cause of death and the first
three, heart attacks, cancer and strokes and facilitated by physician
ignorance of foundational concepts of nutritional physiology.
In the next ten years you're going to see a shift in health care like
you've never seen before.
Drugs will be out and other, more effective ways such as chiropractic
and nutrition will be "in". Not in the fad sense of the word either. It
will be the "in" thing to do because is works. The public will demand it
and when the politics of medicine and food become more ethical, only the
methods that actually work and are the most cost effective will win.
Mark my word; in the next 10 years you will see a 180 degree change in
the methods with which people take care of their health.
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Retail prescription drug spending in the US increased for the fifth straight
year in 2000, primarily reflecting higher sales of a relatively small number
of drugs.
Magazine ads for prescription drugs are high on emotional appeal, but short
on evidence that they work.
Helen McLaughlin was 73 years old when, relatives say, a mix-up in
prescription drugs took her life. In death, she became a statistic that is
causing increasing anxiety among health care experts and Federal regulators:
the tens of thousands of Americans who are killed each year not by illness,
but by medication intended to treat it.
Older Americans shelled out an average of $1,378 per person on prescription
medications last year, an expense that is rising 18.5% annually. At that
rate, seniors will need plenty of advice on managing medication use under a
Medicare prescription drug benefit.
The pharmaceutical industry is under mounting scrutiny because of rapidly
increasing expenditures for drugs in the United States. Drug expenditures
are now the fastest-growing component of health care costs, increasing at
the rate of about 15 percent per year. (1,2) They account for about 8
percent of health care spending, and at their current rate of increase, they
will soon surpass spending for physicians' services and, for many health
maintenance organizations (HMOs), the costs of hospitalization.
The increase is due both to a greater use of drugs and to higher prices for
individual drugs. Patients feel drug costs keenly, because they pay much of
them out of pocket. Many private insurers tightly limit drug coverage, and
Medicare does not cover outpatient drugs at all.
In his latest salvo against the pricing practices of large drug companies,
U.S. Rep. Tom Allen published a new study November 8 showing drug makers
charge less for animal drugs than for equivalent medicines for people.
The most expensive in the world, the American healthcare system is also
riddled with problems and contradictions. In short, the American system is a
work in progress, driven by a disparate array of interests with two goals
that are often in conflict: providing healthcare to the sick, and generating
income for the persons and organizations that assume the financial risk.
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