Falling through the health care cracks
Monday, 08/17/2009 - 11:31 am by Lynn Parramore | 2 Comments
The mood in the LA Forum, home to many a past Madonna concert, is a little different than at, say, a health care town hall meeting. No hostile screaming, no spontaneous and aggressive chants of the Pledge of Allegiance. Here, people are saying, “Thank you.”
A British reporter visited the Forum, where the volunteer group Remote Area Medical is offering free health and dental care to an anticipated 10,000 people in a single week. Guy Adams, a journalist with The Independent, comes away with a picture of America’s health needs that sounds a lot different than the one we’ve been seeing and hearing:
“In the first two days, more than 1,500 men, women and children received free treatments worth $503,000. Thirty dentists pulled 471 teeth; 320 people were given standard issue spectacles; 80 had mammograms; dozens more had acupuncture, or saw kidney specialists.”
Remote Area Medical is going to reach only a tiny sliver of the 50 million Americans without health insurance, but their stories are symbols of the utter failure of the health system in America. We spend more on health care, as a percentage of GDP, than any other rich nation in the world — including Britain and Canada, the two favorite targets of anti-reform Republicans — and yet we are a country full of people like Christine Smith or Liz Cruise.
Smith, 26, hasn’t seen a dentist in eight years. ”I’ve not been able to chew food for as long as I can remember. I’ve been living on soup, and noodles, and blending meals in a food mixer. I’m in constant pain. Normally, it would cost $5,000 to fix it. So if I have to wait a week to get treated for free, I’ll do it. This will change my life,” she told Adams.
Cruise, meanwhile, needs a simple eye exam but hasn’t been able to afford one. ”It’s a simple choice: pay my rent, or pay my healthcare. What am I supposed to do?”
There aren’t a lot of options for someone like Cruise. The rest of, though, know what we’re supposed to do: Raise hell until we get the health care we all need and deserve.
Dr. Richard Ruhling is board-certified in internal medicine and he taught Health Science at Loma Linda University. I believe he is more qualified than most to explain truth that we are not seeing. Medical care is NOT healthcare. It is the diagnosis and treatment of disease, usually with drugs. The drug companies are wanting “healthcare” reform because it means drugs for everyone. We need to understand–
1. Drugs offer relief of symptoms and people think they are ok. They like drugs because they don’t have to eat a low fat, low cholesterol, low salt diet which could reverse high pressure, diabetes, or heart disease (because that’s how we got those conditions).
2. Drugs do not cure disease; they create more problems. Tthe Physician’s Desk Reference has a long list of adverse effects that people would never imagine. For example, a purple pill that advertised, “Heal the damage” has 120 side effects and when you take the pill for more than a few days, you become toxic to that chemical. It may take weeks, months or years, but when you develop “headache, diarrhea, or abdominal pain” and go to the doctor for an additional prescription instead of stopping the one that caused it, you are at high risk for illness, disability, or even death. http://www.Squidoo.com/RxDrugsCauseDeath
3. Medical literature shows adverse drug reactions have become the leading cause of premature death in the U.S., but most people don’t know it because the drug companies sponsor the evening news and keep it a secret. US Senators know, but drug companies contribute to their reelection campaign so they won’t speak out. President Obama is said to have cut a “sweetheart deal” with the drug companies in a private meeting and “Healthcare Reform” is about making drugs (primary treatment doctors use) available to everyone.
Sir William Osler, the Father of Modern Medicine said, “Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is today controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science…We take into our bodies which we know little about, drugs that we know less about, to treat diseases that we know nothing about.”
4. Osler echoed what Hippocrates said, “Nature cures, not the physician…Let your food be your medicine.” Pritikin showed this works by reversing heart disease, high blood pressure and type-2 diabetes in 85% of cases 30 years ago, but medical greed prevented wide acceptance. Our choice is for self-control and self-government that results in freedom and health, or we can exercisie our freedoms to eat, drink and do as we wish, but it brings bondage to illness, pain, medical care–big government “healthcare”–drugs and vaccinations for all.
5. The last message in the Bible is, “Babylon [meaning the confused systems of this world] are fallen…come out of her, my people that you…receive not of her plagues…for by her sorceries [Greek word is pharmakeia] were all nations deceived.” Revelation 18:2,4,23. “Every nation practicing western medicine is on the brink of bankruptcy.” Drugs don’t cure and they will give you more problems later. Dr. Ruhling recommends http://www.TakeCareOfYourself.netfirms.com
Anne Moreno
Posted by Anne | August 18th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Anne - point number three is something that concerns me greatly, having experienced just such a situation in which the pharmacological ‘cure’ was worse than the disease. Thank you for surfacing this issue.
Posted by Lynn | August 18th, 2009 at 8:30 pm