Fixing the system
Julius Cohen - Emporia
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
THE MOST unrealistic mistake we can make regarding the address of the nation’s health care problems is to focus on extending health insurance to everyone. Why? It’s because overall health costs will spiral beyond restraint without a serious overhaul of the health care system.
To be specific, extensive research is emerging with regularity demonstrating the potentials and effectiveness of less expensive alternatives for the promotion of health and longevity. Such developments must be accentuated, financed, refined, verified and widely promoted along with standards for good manufacturing practices to assure quality and reliability. To this end the Government Office of Alternative Medicine must be better financed and expanded.
Second, consumer products inimical to health must be identified and publicized for their drawbacks. The FDA has approved 2,500 food additives. In France only eight are sanctioned. The widespread use of refined sugar in the U.S. and the exploding rates of obesity and diabetes should tell us something. Meanwhile, the FDA steadfastly refuses unqualified approval of Stevia despite its centuries old record of safety abroad. This is but one example among others that abandon good sense and responsibility.
The barriers to change come from a huge, powerful, well-financed vested interest system intent on protecting its survival, status and profits. Moreover, the corrupted FDA requires a drastic overhaul to serve the interests of the public rather than the special interests, especially the drug makers. As is, drug company reps dominate FDA review panels akin to foxes guarding the chickens. Meanwhile physicians appear to have become the pawns of orthodoxy and big pharma prescription drug huckstering. Notably, brain washing advertising tactics, under the guise of education, advise patients to “Ask your doctor if product XXX is right for you,” rather than “Ask your doctor what the alternatives are for your problem.” In response, physicians, as they are in Europe, should be educated in and sanctioned to use alternatives. As one example, heart patients on supportive medical management have been shown, in three large studies, to live as long as those treated with bypass surgery. Yet 600 thousand such surgeries are performed annually in the U.S. at an estimated total cost of from 75-100 billion dollars. Alternatives in cancer diagnosis and treatment are also emerging. Seven out of ten surveyed physicians said that if they had cancer they would not submit to chemotherapy.
There is much more to be said. But, in short, if our medical system is broken as some assert, let’s fix it instead of going down the same old fault-ridden routes.
Julius Cohen has a doctorate in psychology.