Michael’s Comment:
Health care in the United States must become socialized if it is going to serve
everyone. A socialized medical system has an incentive to reduce costs, rather
than to make profit. Our current profit-driven system, by definition because of
the financial bias that has historically been shown to exist in all business,
must strive to keep people from being truly well (keep them alive, but sick) so
that they are forced to buy from the system. That’s why conventional medicine
works hard to refuse to acknowledge important health care cost savers like
cancer therapies that have been shown to work by alternative medical doctors (See:
www.dr-gonzales.com) If the Obama
government puts emphasis on preventive medicine and changing public
consciousness as the article below discusses, it would be possible to save a
trillion dollars a year or more.
Michael Mooney
www.michaelmooney.net
www.medibolics.com
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'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream
The
evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst
afflictions.
By
DEEPAK
CHOPRA , DEAN
ORNISH , RUSTUM
ROY and ANDREW
WEIL
In mid-February, the Institute of
Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell
Collaborative are convening a "Summit on Integrative Medicine and the
Health of the Public." This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative
medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional
and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal
remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not
only medically effective but also cost effective.
Martin Kozlowski
President-elect Barack Obama and former
Sen. Tom Daschle (the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services)
understand that if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45
million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the
fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy
ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery.
Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer,
breast cancer and obesity account for 75% of health-care costs, and yet these
are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle. As
Mr. Obama states in his health plan, unveiled during his campaign: "This
nation is facing a true epidemic of chronic disease. An increasing number of
Americans are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases such as obesity,
diabetes, heart disease, asthma and HIV/AIDS, all of which can be delayed in
onset if not prevented entirely."
The latest scientific studies show that
our bodies have a remarkable capacity to begin healing, and much more quickly
than we had once realized, if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause
these chronic diseases. These studies show that integrative medicine can make a
powerful difference in our health and well-being, how quickly these changes may
occur, and how dynamic these mechanisms can be.
Many people tend to think of
breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser or high-tech surgical procedure.
They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in
our lifestyle -- what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke
cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and
social support -- can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. But they often are.
And in many instances, they're even more powerful.
These studies often used high-tech,
state-of-the-art measures to prove the power of simple, low-tech, and low-cost
interventions. Integrative medicine approaches such as plant-based diets, yoga,
meditation and psychosocial support may stop or even reverse the progression of
coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, prostate cancer, obesity,
hypercholesterolemia and other chronic conditions.
A recent study published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that these approaches may
even change gene expression in hundreds of genes in only a few months. Genes
associated with cancer, heart disease and inflammation were downregulated or "turned off" whereas protective genes were upregulated or "turned on." A study published in The Lancet Oncology reported
that these changes increase telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres,
the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. Even drugs have not
been shown to do this.
Our "health-care system" is
primarily a disease-care system. Last year, $2.1 trillion was spent in the U.S.
on medical care, or 16.5% of the gross national product. Of these trillions, 95
cents of every dollar was spent to treat disease after it had already
occurred. At least 75% of these costs were spent on treating chronic diseases,
such as heart disease and diabetes, that are
preventable or even reversible.
The choices are especially clear in
cardiology. In 2006, for example, according to data provided by the American
Heart Association, 1.3 million coronary angioplasty procedures were performed
at an average cost of $48,399 each, or more than $60 billion; and 448,000 coronary
bypass operations were performed at a cost of $99,743 each, or more than $44
billion. In other words, Americans spent more than $100 billion in 2006 for
these two procedures alone.
Despite these costs, a randomized
controlled trial published in April 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine
found that angioplasties and stents do not prolong life or even prevent heart
attacks in stable patients (i.e., 95% of those who receive them). Coronary
bypass surgery prolongs life in less than 3% of patients who receive it. So,
Medicare and other insurers and individuals pay billions for surgical
procedures like angioplasty and bypass surgery that are usually dangerous,
invasive, expensive and largely ineffective. Yet they pay very little -- if any
money at all -- for integrative medicine approaches that have been proven to
reverse and prevent most chronic diseases that account for at least 75% of
health-care costs. The INTERHEART study, published in September 2004 in The
Lancet, followed 30,000 men and women on six continents and found that changing
lifestyle could prevent at least 90% of all heart disease.