Why do you stand alone in trying to be healthy - American Health Care does not Really Care

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Well here is the answer why.

• Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars when you are on prescription drugs

• Local drug stores and pharmacies make money when you fill prescriptions

• Obamacare makes sure you get subsidies and assistance if the drugs are too expensive

• Big Pharma pays a kickback to your doctor for prescribing their drugs to you

• The President and Congress refuse to change the law so you can get off the drugs

Call it what you like, there is no such thing as health care improvement in our system of health care.  Through doctors, clinics, and emergency rooms, drug companies treat your diseases and disorders with drugs that help manage the disease.

No one pays for you to get you well.

No one pays for a nutritional evaluation so you know the cause of the problem.

No one pays for proven herbal treatments used for thousands of years to eliminate the problem that caused the disease in the first place.

No one pays for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) treatment including herbs, acupuncture, physical training, and working knowledge of the Five Elements.

The Five Elements are a comprehensive template that organizes all natural phenomena into five master groups or patterns in nature. Each of the five groups—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—include categories such as a season, a direction, climate, stage of growth and development, internal organ, body tissue, emotion, aspect of the soul, taste, color, sound . . . the categories are seemingly limitless. The Five Elements reflect a deep understanding of natural law, the Universal order underlying all things in our world.

Traditional Chinese Medicine reflects a principle unknown in America, the principle of healing patients rather than maintaining and managing illness and disease.

Ironically, ignoring thousands of years of TCM experience, our health care system refuses to recognize the body of TCM work and refuses to make insurance companies pay to heal you using these techniques.

Maybe there is hope however.  Take the case of the use of a banned drug, cannabis, for medical purposes.  Over half the states in America have ignored the pressures from pharmaceutical companies to prohibit using marijuana to treat many illnesses.

These states have ignored the pressure from the politicians owned by these companies through campaign contributions and outrageous speaker fees.  The states have even ignored the federal government regulatory laws from the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by legalizing the use of the herb cannabis, better know as marijuana, for medicinal purposes.

That is a start toward meaningful health care reform.  You see, marijuana works, is not addictive, has never resulted in a death from an overdose, is substantially less expensive than Big Pharma drugs, and is not controlled by the richest corporations in America.

Of course, marijuana should be decriminalized; release the tens of thousands of people in prison for using it and save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer costs.  It deserves approval nationwide for medicinal use and states should continue to approve it for recreational use since it has none of the deadly effects our legal drugs called alcohol and tobacco have wreaked on the public.

Far less controversial, and far more significant to improving health, would be to have the federal government require the insurance companies to pay for nutritional examines for all individuals and treatment for nutritional deficiencies.

At the same time, the federal government must approve the use of TCM by certified practitioners and order the insurance companies to cover it.

If the administration and congress can act in the public interest and do this, America will rapidly become a far healthier nation and lead the work in making use of all possible techniques to manage nutrition and get well.

Demand this action from your representatives in Washington, D.C. as they have demonstrated no ability to help you get well.

Besides, for the first time in our history our last three presidents all admit to smoking marijuana.  It must not be that bad.

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Health Care in America - Where Politicians Fear to Tread

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The Broken American Health Care System

Do you notice something wrong with the following statistics?

Chldren 3-17 years of age ever diagnosed with ADHD: 5.2 million

Cildren now on prescription drugs to treat ADHD - 16 million

Adults with Type 2 diabetes in 2010: 25.8 million

Adults treated with Metformin HLC for diabetes: 48.3 million

Adults with chronic pain: 56 million

Adults prescribed Vicodin for chronic pain: 131.2 million

Adults with high cholesterol: 36 million

Adults prescribed Zocor for high cholesterol: 94.1 million

Adults with high blood pressure: 75 million

Adults prescribed Prinivil for high blood pressure: 87.4 million

Adults prescribed Norvasc for high blood pressure: 57.2 million

Adults prescribed Hydrodiuril for high blood pressure: 47.8 million

Adults prescribed just 3 drugs for high blood pressure: 192.4 million

We have a problem in America, a problem people and politicians do not want to hear or think about.  America spends more money than any other nation on health care, far more than most nations, yet we have a mediocre health care system.

Health care costs have been rising for several years.  Expenditures in the United States on health care surpassed $2.3 trillion in 2008, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980.

In 2008, U.S. health care spending was about $7,681 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries. Total health care expenditures grew at an annual rate of 4.4 percent in 2008, a slower rate than recent years, yet still outpacing inflation and the growth in national income.

The following chart shows how much we spend on health care.

We now spend about $2.6 trillion on health care.  The average cost of a family health insurance policy offered by employers was $13,375 this year, up 5% from 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust survey found.

So where does this spending leave us in terms of the quality of our health care system compared to the rest of the world?

Here is the ranking:

Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

How about in terms of developed and undeveloped nations?

1.         France

2.         Italy

3.         San Marino

4.         Andorra

5.         Malta

6.         Singapore

7.         Spain

8.         Oman

9.         Austria

10.       Japan

11.        Norway

12.       Portugal

13.       Monaco

14.       Greece

15.       Iceland

16.       Luxemburg

17.       Netherlands

18.       United Kingdom

19.       Ireland

20.      Switzerland

21.       Belgium

22.      Columbia

23.       Sweden

24.       Cyprus

25.       Germany

26.       Saudi Arabia

27.       U.A.E.

28.      Israel

29.       Morocco

30.      Canada

31.       Finland

32.       Australia

33.       Chile

34.       Denmark

35.       Dominica

36.       Costa Rica

37.      United States

Astonishing!  Our quality of health care is not even as good as nations spending ten times less per capita as we do.  That is not a logical problem, or a cultural problem, it is a criminal problem that our profit driven health care industry and our corrupted political system perpetuate.

There are ways out of the mess.  They will not come from Washington, D.C. however.  Not when billions of dollars are being spent by the industry to protect what they own.

For the past three years and the next four years insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs and other healthcare profiteers will spend billions in advertising and more billions in lobbying to convince us that we have the BEST healthcare system in the world.  The truth is far from that claim.

That is why I am starting a series of articles on the broken American Health Care system, and what it will take to give us the quality of health care we deserve for the money we spend on health care.

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How Greed Not Obama Controls the Health Care System - CVS Exorbitant Drug Profits

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For several years we have reported on different aspects of the health care industry and how the American public is being charged outrageous prices for prescriptions, examinations, and treatment far beyond what is reasonable and good for our health and economy.

Now Obama has passed his Health Care Reform and rather than attempting to clean out the greed and lies powering the profit of the industry, he has institutionalized it in a way that may make it impossible to fix. The system now works in a way that makes it harder and harder to get to the truth, and that assumes Congress and the president have any desire to investigate those throwing money into their campaign funds.



Let me give you a real life example of how the shell game works that makes you feel good about your health care while others make outrageous profits. In the end you are paying for these profits, all consumers are paying, because your health insurance just increases premiums to make up for it.

I needed an antibiotic for a treatment and I do not have health insurance. Most small businesses like mine cannot afford health insurance and in spite of that Obama intends to fine me for it. But that is another story about the loss of freedom and choice in America.



So my doctor calls in a prescription to CVS Pharmacy in Leonardtown, Maryland, a huge chain that advertises how they are taking care of the needs of their consumers. Since I live down on the Potomac River about 25 miles away I asked a friend to stop by and pick it up. Also I said to check whether it was generic or the brand drug.

I am always nervous about the brand versus generic drugs because as with most products, there is a reason generics are cheaper. In many product lines it may be that inferior materials or packaging are made in China where there is no effective quality control. It may be the size of package or weight of the product are smaller than the brand name they are meant to replace.



Whatever the reason I know when I get something cheaper at WalMart I have most likely given up something in terms of quality and quality control since most stuff is now made in China. However, when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs I am not inclined to take the cheaper route because the government and health care industry say brand names are better because quality control is better since it is made in America, not China.

When my friend stopped by CVS the Pharmacist said if I wanted the brand name I needed to have health insurance and since I didn't they recommended a cheaper generic alternative. The cheaper alternative still cost over $73 for 100 pills, far more than any recent prices I had seen for antibiotics. When he called me back with the information I did some research.



First I called CVS and said why did having health insurance dictate whether I would get brand or generic drugs? She advised me that without health insurance most people cannot afford brand names. If you have health insurance they will just process the insurance claim if that is what you want.

So I asked what the cost for the brand name medicine would be and she looked it up and replied it would be over $700 for the same prescription. Now I was not a math major but I was the Assistant Treasurer of the State of New Jersey, back when we had a state budget surplus, and I questioned how the brand name could cost ten times as much as the generic. She didn't know.



Then I pointed out that virtually all brand prescriptions for penicillin type antibiotics in America now have their major ingredients made in China to lower the cost so they could compete with generics. She was not aware of the recent FDA revelations of the manipulation of brand manufacturing and the use of Chinese components in them.

So I then got the actual cost of the generic medicine from my doctor, who was outraged by the cost of the generic drug, and absolutely astounded by the cost of the brand name. In one phone call he determined the generic drug cost CVS about $7.50 for 100 pills, in other words the pills cost CVS about 7½ cents each. They sold them to me for 73 cents each. But if I had health insurance and bought the brand name they cost $7 each, even though major ingredients were now made in China. That means CVS was marking up the generic drug to me almost ten times! CVS, the friendly neighborhood drug store, was taking me to the cleaners for 10 times their cost for the drug!



Not even the big bad oil companies have the guts to charge consumers ten times more than their cost to produce gasoline. In fact I know of no industry outside the health care industry where such outrageous profits are charged. This is what the Obama health care reforms have brought to us.

Just as important, if major pharmaceutical companies are now manufacturing some of their drug components in China, why is their price continuing to increase and why is it already ten times more expensive than the generic drug which is already marked up ten times more than the cost to CVS?



We Americans have been sold a bill of goods in health care. No one is looking for meaningful ways to reduce the cost of health care, just to make sure that the outrageous costs are covered by health insurance. Many billions of dollars in excessive profits are being charged by the pharmaceutical industry, and clearly the retail pharmacies like CVS, and no one in Washington seems to care.

Any responsible congressman should initiate a congressional investigation of the pricing structure for drugs by the pharmaceutical companies and their retail partners like CVS. It is not the health of Americans that is driving up health care costs it is the cost of the greed inherent in the industry and the protection the government has given to protect these excessive profits.

Ironically, my congressman is Steny Hoyer, the Majority leader of the House and the force behind the Obama Health Care Reform. Hoyer is the recipient of thousands of dollars from health care providers and has shown no indication of questioning the cost of health care that he is protecting. We citizens are being held hostage by politicians who place a higher value on special interests like health care providers than the value they place on American citizens.



Congress should investigate this matter. The Justice Department should investigate this matter. The Obama administration should investigate this matter and the people should investigate this matter. If we don't go after excessive profiteering, unfair business practices and price manipulation then we have no representation in Washington. No reform will work when the industry is trapped in a cycle of greed like we face.

Prescription drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world. "The prices Americans pay for prescription drugs, which are far higher than those paid by citizens of any other developed country, help explain why the pharmaceutical industry is — and has been for years — the most profitable of all businesses in the U.S. In the annual Fortune 500 survey, the pharmaceutical industry topped the list of the most profitable industries, with a return of 17% on revenue."



As an example of the extremely high U.S. drug prices, consider the cholesterol drug Lipitor, the best selling drug in the world. At CVS, a leading U.S. pharmacy, Lipitor (40 mg/90 tablets) costs $361.99. At Drugstore.com, another U.S. pharmacy, the same drug costs $335.97. While in Canada at CanadianOnlineRx.com pharmacy, the cost is $215.46, in The Netherlands $177, and in India at licensed pharmacy InternationalDrugMart.com, the identical generic drug costs $120.94 (Source: All costs in US$,19 May 2008, from the respective pharmacy websites).



The rise in costs of prescription medicines affects all sectors of the health care industry, including private insurers, public programs, and patients. Spending on prescription drugs continues to be an important health care concern, particularly in light of rising pharmaceutical costs, the aging population, and increased use of costly specialty drugs. In recent history, prescription drug costs have outpaced other categories of health care spending, rising rapidly throughout the latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s. While the rate of growth in spending has slowed somewhat, it is projected to exceed spending on hospital care and other professional services in 2010 and through 2019.

Come on Steny, show us how much you care about deficit spending and runaway costs of your constituents health care by checking this out. As for CVS, for shame. You are the poster boy for the greed that has crippled the health care industry in America.

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Biden Tells Real Intent of Obama Health Care Reform

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Vice President Biden is no stranger to sticking his foot in his mouth or telling too much when asked a question. Yeserday, he may have finally revealed the real intent of the Obama health care reform in a speech everyone thought would get no notice because of the United Nations meeting.

In a discussion of the health care reforms needed, and after mauling the insurance industry which is required of every card carrying liberal, he made the following comments.




"You can't rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. We've got to change ships here!"

Is that liberal code for throwing out the system 70% of the people want to keep and replacing it with the government run public option program sought by the far left and socialist crowd? The goal has always been to eliminate all competition and eliminate private sector involvement in health care so the new system can be controlled by the unions and liberals.

At least he said what he meant this time. There was no effort by the White House to clarify what Biden meant, even when Obama's press secretary was asked directly if Biden was speaking for the president.

Obama on Health Care - Above the Bickering but What About the Facts

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Long on hyperbole and short on specifics, did the president connect to the public on his health care speech? Well, he spent 10% of the speech glorifying America's most liberal former Senator Ted Kennedy, a man who spent 46 years in the Senate accomplishing just about nothing on health care. I'm sure the liberal left in Boston was pleased but middle America was probably left wondering why far more time was spent on Kennedy than on financing health care.

Obama did promise he would consider tort reform to stop the proliferation of legal fees to his trial lawyers supporters but considering is hardly endorsing. He did wallow around on the public option but in the end who knows if he does or does not want it in the final bill. It would seem at a minimum he will have some trigger mechanism to implement it when the opposition dies down.




Of course if I was talking and the evil eye of Nancy Pelosi was burning holes in my back I might dance around the subject she declared essential to any bill coming out of Her House. If he does compromise with the concern of the people and drops the public option he will spend the rest of his presidency fighting her and not the Republicans.

There have been many presidential addresses to a joint Congress in our nation's history. This was just the third on health care. Yet the only time health care reform has been approved was when presidents did not address a joint session of congress on the subject, under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.




Some lingering questions:

How will it be financed? He acknowledged it will cost at least $900 billion over ten years. Government has never even been close to accurate on projected spending and when it comes to health care government projections have been a joke. So it will most likely cost far more.

Obama says he will not sign any bill that raises the national debt by one dollar. The Obama gang was quite shrewd in crafting a bill and identifying the cost over ten years, long after he has left the presidency. But in truth the explosive cost will be at the front end of the time period when he thinks he can add millions of uninsured people and build 54 new governmental agencies without increasing the deficit. America is so broke already they can't even give a pay raise to congress without adding to the deficit so this language is deceptive at best, dishonest at worst.

Obama says there is nearly $500 billion in fraud in our current health care system. If that is true then why is the Obama government not prosecuting the crooks stealing billions of dollars from the public treasury right now? Why not prosecute the crooks first, save the $500 billion and then fund health care reform?




How are we ever going to stop the insurance companies, stop the trial lawyers and stop the medical industry from overcharging us and restricting competition when those very industries and their lobbyists already own the president and congress? Nearly every politician in Washington is dependent on those very same bad guys to fund their upcoming reelection campaigns. Are they really going to slap the hands that feed their insatiable appetite for campaign money?

More importantly, how in the world can we spend any more money on anything when the economy is teetering, unemployment is still rising, China holds the mortgage on America, our wars have become an endless pit of money and deaths, the annual debt has hit astounding new records, the national deficit has hit staggering new levels and nothing has been done to stop Wall Street, the banks, the credit card companies and Heaven knows who else from ripping off the unsuspecting American consumer?




As long as the foxes remain in the hen house of our nation's capitol the American public does not have a chance. Obama, Pelosi, the Democrats and the Republicans have created an green environment alright, one that lines their pockets and the pockets of their lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, advisors, stock brokers and bankers with greenbacks sucked right out of your very own pockets. Reform Washington style sucks.

The Health Industry Capitulation - This Sure Ain't No Pythagorean Theorem

This week Obama announced that members of the doctors, pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance industry involved in health care have agreed to give up 1 1/2% of their future price increases. Man would I like to be a hero for giving up 1 1/2% of what I don't even have and may never get.

That is a slick math move like many we have already witnessed from these clever craftsmen of New World economics. We are going to save $2 trillion over the next ten years in health care costs, $2 trillion in price increases that haven't even been approved. Is that a negative attitude or what. If you buy the language we already have the 7% a year in price increases guaranteed for the next ten years.

Obama isn't even going to be president for ten years unless that is another law they intend to disregard. Anyway, the problem with health care is that we already have the most expensive system in the world and still 46 million Americans don't have health care and we are far from the healthiest people on Earth. I guess money not only can't buy you love but it can't buy you quality health care either.

Now 12 million of the 46 million uninsured are illegal aliens. Most already have insurance so we really should not count them as uninsured. Of course the liberals still think our social programs are inadequate but they don't understand how many people have already figured out how to take advantage of the programs.

Another 10 million uninsured are college students but they could be covered by family or school insurance programs. That leaves 20 million Americans really uninsured, not 46 million. In spite of the generous cut in future increases by the health industry, it means health care costs will still increase by billions of dollars a year in the most expensive but not the best health care program in the world.

If the program is already too expensive then cut the budget, don't let it increase. Believe it or not that is how you get budgets into balance. Obama has got a 1 1/2% reduction in future costs leaving a 5.5% annual cost increase that he says is acceptable. He has asked for $750 billion more in health care spending next year alone.

So why is it costing us billions more to reduce the cost of health care? I say a 7% annual increase on top of the astounding increase in health care costs the past two decades is ridiculous. Just eliminate the 7% we don't even have and cut the fraud, corruption and waste in what is here right now. We should be able to cut the budget and still expand coverage to everyone. Does that sound too American and not enough socialist, I mean liberal?

If you really want to cut health care costs stop prescribing prescription drugs to our children and seniors and we can save billions. Do you know the average senior in America has 6-8 drug prescriptions? Then there are estimates that up to 6 million kids are taking Ritalin prescriptions for attention deficit disorder though less than half that number have been diagnosed with the problem.

Prescribing unnecessary drugs does have a multiplying effect in terms of a stimulus program however. The excessive payment to the pharmaceutical company that makes it, the payment and/or kick back to the doctor who prescribes it, the insurance company for processing fees for the claim, why even the patient who is transformed into a Zombie by the tranquil illusion from the drug.

You could eliminate half the cost of prescription drugs and have no effect on the health of the patients. Better still go to a Medicine Man or Woman and actually get healed. What a concept!