Most people are well aware that an estimated 45 million Americans currently do not have healthcare, but is the crisis simply the lack of health insurance or even the cost of health insurance? Is there a bigger underlying problem at the root of our healthcare system? Although the U.S. claims to have the most advanced medicine in the world, government health statistics and peer-reviewed journals are painting a different picture -- that allopathic medicine often causes more harm than good.
People in general have always felt they could trust doctors and the medical profession, but according to the Journal of the American Medical Association in July 2000, iatrogenic death, also known as death from physician error or death from medical treatment, was the third leading cause of death in America and rising, responsible for at least 250,000 deaths per year. Those statistics are considered conservative by many, as the reported numbers only include in-hospital deaths, not injury or disability, and do not include external iatrogenic deaths such as those resulting from nursing home and other private facility treatments, and adverse effects of prescriptions. One recent study estimated the total unnecessary deaths from iatrogenic causes at approximately 800,000 per year at a cost of $282 billion per year, which would make death from American medicine the leading cause of death in our country.
Currently, at least 2 out of 3 Americans use medications, 32 million Americans are taking three or more medications daily, and commercials and advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs have saturated the marketplace. Although our population is aging, exorbitantly expensive drugs are being marketed and dispensed to younger and younger patients, including many children who years ago would never have been given or needed medication, for everything from ADHD to asthma to bipolar disease and diabetes. Clearly, the state of health in this country is not improving even though there are an increasing number of medications and treatments. Between 2003 and 2010, the number of prescriptions are expected to increase substantially by 47%. In recent years, numerous drugs previously deemed safe by the FDA have been recalled because of their toxicity, after the original drug approvals were actually funded by the invested pharmaceutical companies themselves.
According to the media, thanks to advances in U.S. drugs and medical procedures, Americans are living longer statistically, but they are living longer sicker, with a lower quality of life, and often dependent on multiple expensive synthetic medications that do not cure or address the underlying causes, but only suppress symptoms, often with a plethora of dangerous side effects to the tune of billions of dollars for the drug industry. Considering that the U.S. is supposed to have the most advanced technology in the world and the best health care system, it is at odds that we spend the most on healthcare, yet are the most obese and most afflicted with illness outside of the AIDS epidemic in some third world countries.
Unless you have an acute emergency that requires emergency room care, being admitted to a hospital environment may also be more dangerous to your health than staying out. In 2003, epidemiologists reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that hospital-acquired infections have risen steadily in recent decades, with blood and tissue infections known as sepsis almost tripling from 1979 to 2000. Nearly two million patients in the U.S. get an infection while in the hospital each year, and of those patients over 90,000 die per year, up dramatically from just 13,300 in 1992. Statistics show that approximately 56% of the population has been unnecessarily treated, or mistreated, by the medical industry.
Additionally, as a result of the overuse of pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics in our bodies and environment, our immune systems have become significantly weakened, allowing antibiotic-resistant strains of disease-causing bacteria to proliferate, leaving us more susceptible to further disease. Not surprisingly, incidences of diseases have been growing at epidemic levels according to the CDC. Now diseases once thought conquered, such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, malaria, and childhood ear infections are much harder to successfully treat than they were decades ago. Drugs do not cure. They only suppress the symptoms that your body needs to express, while they ignore the underlying root cause. Side effects of synthetic and chemical drugs, which even if they are partly derived from nature have been perverted to make them patentable and profitable, are not healthy or natural, and usually cause more harm than any perceived benefit of the medication.
Where "physician errors" are concerned, these may not be entirely the fault of the doctors, as they are forced to operate within the constraints of their profession or risk losing their license, but doctors have become pawns and spokesmen for the drug companies, and the best interest of the patient has become secondary. In the name of profit, physicians are also under great pressure from hospitals to service patients as quickly as possible, like an assembly line, increasing the likelihood of error.
In conclusion, increases in healthcare costs are not just the result of frivolous law suits, but are primarily the result of a profit-oriented industry that encourages practices that lead to unnecessary and harmful procedures being performed, lethal adverse drug reactions, infections, expensive legitimate lawsuits, in-hospital and physician errors, antibiotic resistance due to overprescribing of antibiotics and drugs, and the hundreds of thousands of subsequent unnecessary deaths and injuries. Many people do not realize that there are healthier natural options, and anything unnatural or invasive we are exposed to is likely to cause either immediate or cumulative damage over time.
For more information on how to help your body heal itself naturally without chemicals, information on drug side effects, and harmful disease-causing chemicals in the foods you eat and your environment and how to avoid them, please visit the NatureGem web site at http://www.naturegem.com
About the author:
Deb Bromley is a science and technology researcher and the President of NatureGem Nontoxic Living, an organization devoted to promoting awareness of toxins in our food and environment that can cause disease, and providing access to nutrition information, natural remedies, and alternative health resources. Please visit http://www.naturegem.comfor more information.
How to Find Affordable
Health Insurance
by: Dr. Deepak Dutta
Affordable health insurance - it seems, especially today, those words
just don't belong together in the same sentence. Health insurance monthly
premiums have become the biggest single expense in our lives - surpassing
even mortgage payments. In fact, if you have any permanent health
problems, such as diabetes, or have had cancer at one time in your family
history, your monthly cost could easily be more than the house and car
payment combined.
Shopping for affordable health insurance can certainly be an
eye-opener. If you have always had a health insurance benefit where you
work - especially a state or federal employee - and now have to buy your
own, you may not be able to afford the level of health insurance coverage
you have become used to.
Affordable health insurance, however, is definitely available -if you
know how and where to look.
When you are looking for affordable health insurance, you want the
lowest cost per year that will fit your budget, of course. But, even more
importantly, you want a company that has a good record for paying without
fighting with you on every detail. Just as there is a car for just about
any budget, there is also affordable health insurance. You may not be able
to afford a "Cadillac" policy - but then you probably don't need all the
frills anyway.
Shopping for health insurance on the internet is the easiest and best
way to find affordable health insurance. Here are five reasons why.
1. You don't need a local agent to help you submit the claims for
health insurance. The medical provider does it for you. You save money
because the health insurance company saves money by not paying the agent
commission. This could amount to an 8% to 12% savings to you.
2. All the top health insurance companies are at your fingertips on the
internet. Most local agents can only quote you from the few companies that
they represent. They may not offer you what is best for you financially or
health-wise but only what they happen to have available.
3. Health insurance companies have to be extremely competitive because
it is so quick and easy to compare them with their competitors on the
internet today. In the past you would have had to visit physically eight
to ten agents to do a similar comparison. Most folks just didn't have the
time or desire for that.
4. You can change your coverage, deductibles, and payment options with
just a few clicks rather than going through the paperwork delay with a
local agent (and then finding out he/she made a mistake - more delay).
5. Charging to a credit card means you aren't going to forget a payment
and be without insurance. Also, it gives you another 30 days before you
actually have to pay. Also, many companies today give an additional
discount for "auto-pay".
The key, however, to finding affordable health insurance is realizing
that the purpose of any health insurance is to protect you from a major
financial loss - not to protect you from spending small money on clinic
visits and sliver removal. These small expenses may be cumbersome but they
generally will not hurt you. It's the $100,000 heart operation that will
break you. That's the financial disaster health insurance was originally
designed to prevent.
Also, keep this in mind. Health insurance, as with any insurance, is a
gamble. You are gambling that you will draw out more than you pay in. Your
health insurance company is gambling they will pay out less. The odds are
in their favor for two reasons. They have all the facts for millions of
families to average out, so they know the risk in advance. Also, they get
to set the rules and the prices. The higher you set your deductible, the
more risk you take. This is not a bad thing at all. You will most likely
be the winner in the long run.
Yes, finding affordable health insurance is much easier than most
people think.
Taking more of the risk with higher deductibles, spending a little time
on the internet comparing eight to ten different companies, and deleting
coverage that you will not likely need (such as maternity for many folks)
will make it very possible to find your own affordable health insurance.
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