In recent commentary on health care, Dr. Joseph Mercola provides some evaluative data on the bigger picture on health care benefits. For example, he quotes the Centers of Medicate & Medicaid Services (CMS) reports on the national health expenditure (NHE) as having increase 6.7% in 2006 to a total of $2.1 trillion dollars. That figure represents 16% of GDP and an average of $7,026 spent on health care is for each and every American. Out of pocket expenses paid by individuals amounted to $1.1 trillion or 54% of the total NHE. Prescription drug expenditures increased by 5.8% in the same year.
Based of CMS historical data, NHE was just $253.4 billion in 1980 or $1,100 per person, and accounted for 9.1% of GDP. Since 1960, health care costs have doubled every seven years.
“There is now evidence that there are large parts of the population in the United States whose health has been getting worse for about two decades…. Decline in life expectancy in these worst-off areas [is] being primarily caused by a rise in a number of diseases, such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes,” according to a joint study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington.
“Diabetes, for example, is both preventable and treatable through simple, inexpensive lifestyle changes,” says Dr. Mecola. “But no, instead these people are led to believe they need drugs – which they can’t afford – and so nothing is done and they die prematurely.”
While Americans have been spending more and more money on health care over the past decades, the life expectancy of certain groups is going down. Why? According to Dr. Mercola,
“drug companies are THE primary force behind the terrible health statistics of the U.S…. They have been able to control the U.S. Congress and manipulate it to pass just about any and every law they want. Once you understand how they control the government, you realize how they are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars for their hyperinflated drug prices. This goes into their own coffers; for their own good — NOT for the good of the public…. This diversion of funding that is the primary reason why American health is so poor.”
“This year the US will spend $2.5 trillion dollars on health care, but by 2017, health care spending is projected to exceed $4 TRILLION. This is largely due to the costs of drugs and surgery and a reliance on a medical system that treats only symptoms and never the cause of disease.” (emphasis added.)
The costs of health care extends beyond insurance, medical procedures, and medication. The costs of prescription drug related deaths and injuries must also be considered. Medical reports by the National Academy of Sciences, University of Arizona Department of Pharmacology, and studies reported by Journal of the American Medical Association reveal that each year at least 200,000 people die, over 8 million are hospitalized, and over 2 million are injured from adverse side effects of prescription drugs. Some estimate the total costs at $140 billion a year.
“Thus, when the total number of deaths is calculated, the use of prescription drugs is this country’s third leading cause of death, behind only heart disease (number one) and cancer (number two), “And looking at the real cost of pharmaceutical drugs, for every dollar spent buying them, we spend at least another dollar — up to two dollars — attempting to repair the damage they cause,” according to Burton Goldberg.
Maybe the best way to understand Ohio pharmacists patient care plan is to remember the primary goal of publicly-traded corporate drug manufacturers is profit not honesty or consumer health. Physicians and pharmacists are primary links in the supply chain of drug companies. Physicians function like a repair shop whose services sales drugs. Pharmacists function like retail specialists whose stores supply the sale of drugs. All greatly profit from each and every sale of corporate manufactured drugs. The Ohio pharmacist patient care plan is an educational marketing program to increase the consumption of drugs. Hence, the reason for the very large increases in sales of drugs during the Ashville study. The positive side benefit is that some drugs do enhance the body’s natural healing system. Some people may be helped but often they are never healed. Many drugs mask symptoms but do not correct their causes. If causes of disease like —
- Unhealthy dietary and hygienic lifestyle that engenders ill health;
- Socially sanctioned immoral behaviors that lead to diseases like aids and HPV;
- Continuous contamination of the environment and food supply by corporations that cause healthy bacteria to mutate into harmful disease —
were corrected, most people would no longer need many medical services and medicines until maybe very late in life. That presents the possibility that drug companies and pharmacists would have to settle for much lower income or find another more profitable line of work like the rest of us.
The Ohio pharmacists patient care plan evaluated by the above casts a shadow of doubt on its actually long-term benefits to Americans. Previous studies do provide evidence that insured patient health does improve. Insurers benefit by the reduction of medical claim payouts, which proved greater than increased medicine claims. The big winners, however, are pharmacists and drug companies. Their profits are likely to increase at least as much as the rate of skyrocketing costs already incurred by patients. It is obvious that pharmacists intend to help America reach the $4 trillion in national health care costs projected by the CMS.
The long-term scenario presented by Dr. Mercola is that people will not be much healthier or live any longer. America’s health care expenditures will still be the highest in the world.
It seems the real solution to health care is to honestly address and effectively resolve the actual causes of our many diseases. Of course, that means living morally self-governing and disciplined lives with the help of social and legal sanctions. Actually resolving our health issues would screw up nearly 80 years of secular sexual politics, defiance of natural law, belief in fallacious facts and laws based on them, corporate leeching of our economic well-being, and the whole drug based paradigm of symptom treating health care.