Flawed Health Care system

Among the many flaws of the present system that misapplies an acute care model to chronic illness is the practice of deploying drugs-or-surgery as the first and/or only option which discourages the individual from taking personal responsibility for their health and thus fosters dependency on external intervention methods. While there is certainly a time and place for external intervention, unhealthy lifestyle choices and lack of basic knowledge, together with a host of other causes (needless/ineffective medical treatments¹, unprincipled research and the burgeoning use of pharmaceuticals), have conjoined to create a costly, ineffective and imploding medical system.

1. US Healthcare Costs are Unsustainable: Costs are bankrupting us and focusing on insurance reform simply profits the current system that emphasizes medical intervention over keeping people healthy.
   • The total U.S. health care expenditures are projected to increase from $2.39 trillion in 2008 to $2.72 trillion in 2010, with annual increases averaging about 7%. (Plunkett Research)
   • Corporate healthcare insurance costs have been escalating steadily and illness-related absenteeism comprises up to 60% of total medical costs causing companies to lose more than $226 billion annually. (“Now, the Stick,” Washington Post)The total U.S. health care expenditures are projected to increase from $2.39 trillion in 2008 to $2.72 trillion in 2010, with annual increases averaging about 7%. (Plunkett Research)
   • In 2006, health care spending accounted for 16% of the nation’s GN². Over 75% of total health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure³. Forty percent of Americans have chronic health problems⁴ and that is expected to increase to about 47% by 2020⁵. The good news is that most chronic diseases are preventable.
   • U.S. healthcare is 2 to over 100 times more expensive as any other country, and ranks poorly in performance. Specifically, the US is twice as expensive as the top ranked, 100 times as expensive as the 11th ranked):
     • 12th of 13 top industrial nations on national indicators (Starfield 2000)
     • 72nd on “how well health care system improves citizens’ health” (World Health Organization)
2. Ailing U.S. Medical System due in part to using an acute illness model (drug/surgical) of healthcare for chronic illness
   • 60% of deaths worldwide are due to chronic illnesses. “This is a preventable epidemic” (World Health Organization)
   • Medical treatments generally ineffective for chronic illness: heart disease, cancer, diabetes. Plus drugs can create disorders: antibiotics, gut flora, chronic gut problems can result in allergies and most degenerative diseases. Surgery and drugs can actually CAUSE chronic problems. Healthy Affairs⁶ reports that there is “…strong evidence that much of the care that is being provided is inappropriate (that is, likely to provide no benefit or to cause more harm than good) and…indications that many patients are not receiving beneficial service.” Institute of Medicine reported study results which revealed that approximately 4% of all medical treatments have strong evidence to support their use. More than half have weak evidence or no evidence at all.
   • In a signature article Holman writes that “The inadequacy of clinical education is a consequence of the failure of health care and medical education to adapt to 2 related transformations in the past 50 years that are central to good health care today. In the first, chronic disease replaced acute disease as the dominant health problem. In the second, chronic disease dramatically transformed the role of the patient…The differences between acute and chronic disease are substantial. Acute disease is episodic. The patient is usually inexperienced and passive while the physician administers treatment. There is commonly a cure and the patient returns to normal. None of this is true for chronic disease. Chronic disease is continuous. There is rarely a cure. The patient usually lives indefinitely with the disease and its symptoms, with persistent treatment and with multiple consequences, including necessary behavioral changes to forestall worsening of the disease, social and economic dislocation, emotional turmoil, financial fear, lowered self-esteem, and depression. As a result, the patient becomes experienced, is often more knowledgeable than the physician about the effects of the disease and its treatment, and has an integral role in the treatment process.”⁷  
   • 95% of all medical spending is aimed at that 10% to 15% of inadequate care rather than addressing lifestyle choices through education and prevention causing 70% of the cost and preventable deaths, according to a report from Healthy Affairs.⁸
   • The health crisis in the U.S. is not necessarily driven by individuals but by a systematic failure of healthcare to treat illness and disease rather than prevent them, according to The Milken Institute.⁹
   • Patients in a 1996 Picker Survey reported that the health care system is a “nightmare to navigate”—that it feels less like a system than a confusing, expensive, unreliable, and often impersonal disarray.¹⁰
   • The Institute of Medicine concludes that “health care is plagued today by a serious quality gap. The current health care delivery system is not robust enough to apply medical knowledge and technology consistently in ways that are safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. As we strive to close this gap, we must seek health care solutions that are patient-centered, that is, humane and respectful of the needs and preferences of individuals.¹¹
3. Consumer-focused health information is conflicting, biased and often deceptive, and medical/pharmaceutical is frequently fraudulent:
   • The prestigious JAMA concludes that “many of the largest pharmaceutical corporations have been implicated in health care fraud cases, sometimes more than once. With expansion of government health care, investigations of pharmaceutical manufacturers will continue to result in substantial financial recoveries. Our findings raise concern that despite these recoveries, industry-wide changes in the way pharmaceutical corporations conduct marketing activities are needed.¹²
   • A Time Magazine article about the GlaxoSmithKline fine, concludes that “Even $3 billion is likely not enough to stop another drug scandal from happening again.”¹³
   • Lock, et al note that “Fraud and misconduct are, it seems, endemic in scientific research. Even Galileo, Newton and Mendel appear to have fudged some of their results. From paleontology to nanotechnology, scientific fraud reappears with alarming regularity…Patients have been invented to increase numbers (and profits) in clinical trials, ethical guidance on consent and confidentiality have been breached, and ‘salami’ and duplicate publication crop up from time to time.”¹⁴
   • It is estimated that around 75% of the research on pharmacerticals published in medical journals are ghostwritten by public relations firms hired by pharmaceutical companies¹⁵.
   • In one of the biggest indictments of Big Pharma, the author comments that “The real story here is that this is business as usual in the pharmaceutical industry…Drug companies bribe researchers and doctors as a routine matter. Medical journals routinely publish false, fraudulent studies. FDA panel members regularly rely on falsified research in making their drug approval decisions, and the mainstream media regularly quotes falsified research in reporting the news.
     Fraudulent research, in other words, is widespread in modern medicine. The pharmaceutical industry couldn’t operate without it, actually. It is falsified research that gives the industry its best marketing claims and strongest FDA approvals. Quacks like Dr Scott Reuben are an important part of the pharmaceutical profit machine because without falsified research, bribery and corruption, the industry would have very little research at all…When pushers of pharmaceuticals and vaccines resort to quoting “evidence-based medicine” as their defense, keep in mind that much of their so-called evidence has been entirely fabricated.
     “Evidence-based medicine,” it turns out, hardly exists anymore. And even if it does, how do you know which studies are real vs. which ones were fabricated? If a trusted, well-paid researcher can get his falsified papers published for 13 years in top-notch science journals — without getting caught by his peers — then what does that say about the credibility of the entire peer-review science paper publishing process? Here’s what is says: “Scientific medicine” is a total fraud.”¹⁶
   • Moreover research fraud is affecting medical school and the profession itself. Alliance for Human Research Protection commented a New York article by Duff Wilson that Harvard medical “students worry that pharmaceutical industry scandals in recent years, including criminal convictions, billions of dollars in fines, proof of bias in research and publishing and false marketing claims, have cast a bad light on the medical profession…The students were joined by Dr. Marcia Angell, a faculty member and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, who has vigorously advocated for an end to liaisons between academia and Big Pharma.¹⁷
   • Medical myths are spread across the internet and mass media, and many are believed even by most physicians.¹⁸
   • Cholesterol.Keeping in mind the review above that at least 75% of drug research is fraudulent, the revised 2001, US guidelines tripled the number of Americans advised to take statins (cholesterol-lowering) drugs for prevention of heart disease, yet according to numerous articles, both peer-review and Dr. Mercola who champions the discontinuation of statins :
     • Cholesterol has only a weak relation to heart problems and many studies conclude that statins are neither “beneficial or safe.”¹⁹ A leading alternative hypothesis is that homocysteine, not LDL, is the issue in heart disease.²⁰
     • The problem with cholesterol as related to heart disease is damaged (oxidized) LDL, not total amounts of LDL per se.²¹ LDL is required for the body to be healthy.²²
     • Cholesterol lowering medications have very harmful side effects, most commonly muscle pain and damage (rhabdomyolsis),²³ affecting 20% of those on statins²⁴, which includes the heart muscle and can therefore actually lead to heart disease, decreased myocardial function, myopathies and liver dysfunction. A major problem is loss of CoQ10 and number of experts have recommended warnings on statins²⁵, yet the FDA still touts the benefits of statins over the risks.
     • Heart problems can be prevented/treated with more effective and much less expensive lifestyle choices: diet, water, exercise reduced stress, sleep, and Vitamin D–hundreds of articles are available on PubMed and the American Heart Association–see Impact of Lifestyle Behaviors for a sampling of articles.
   • Sunshine: Skin cancer is a big fear because most physicians advise avoiding exposure to sunlight, or use sunblock when in the sun, but by dong so we miss the critically healthy benefits of sunlight–see almost any article by Dr. Holick.
     • Lack of vitamin D from sunshine is actually correlated with MS, cancer, hearth disease, depression, osteoperosis, bone health, skin problems, and most chronic illnesses.²⁶
     • However getting adequate amounts of vitamin D from sunshine depends on a number of factors including angle of the sun relative to time of day and season and latitude, race and obesity–see our prototype using sunshine as the example used in the prototype.
4. Decreased Individual Responsibility
   • 70% of preventable mortality is due to poor lifestyle choices (Institute Of Medicine).²⁷
   • Archives of Internal Medicine²⁸ reports that the cumulative protective effect of just four healthy lifestyle factors lowers the risk of developing the most common and deadly chronic diseases by about 80%.
   • Bodies are made up of integrated chemical processes requiring fuels and other “supports” to make them work. The quality of those fuels (and thoughts, etc.) greatly influences the system’s outcomes. Signs and symptoms are indicators that something isn’t working right, that the body is calling for attention. Most people are unaware of these processes so when their health breaks down, they don’t know why. They simply don’t understand the relationship between their lifestyle habits and health outcomes.

clearing…