America’s health care is in a crisis of both cost and care. Most Americans are spending way too much for way too little, way too late. It’s a crisis because insurance premiums have soared beyond most of our means but, more importantly, it’s a crisis because the conventional medical system has focused on disease rather than health, extraordinarily expensive procedures late in the progression of disease rather than prevention and prescribe tests and treatments based on fear of liability and law suits rather than on the health and best interest of the individual.
The U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care than any other country in the world, yet ranks 21st in infant mortality, 17th in male life expectancy, and 16th in female life expectancy.
The health care bill in the United States is $2.5 trillion per year, or 15.2 percent of the U.S. economy. Of that $2.5 trillion dollars, approximately 80% goes to hospitals, drug companies and doctors, while 20% goes to cover administrative costs.
A review of our current health care dilemma published in Consumer Reports conservatively concluded that overuse of medical services wastes $300 billion a year, while administrative inefficiency adds about $170 billion. That’s a whopping $470 billion wasted annually.
A Rand Corporation study, using nationally recognized medical experts found that up to 35% of all hospital admissions are not needed, 15-30% of diagnostic tests don’t help or aren’t even looked at, 25% of hospital days could be done without, and 25% of all medical procedures are unnecessary.
There are 2.2 million Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) and 106,000 fatalities annually in the U.S. due to known side effects of prescription drugs and an additional 98,000 Americans that die every year from medication mistakes made by physicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals. That’s more than from breast cancer, highway accidents and AIDS combined according to the report from the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.
“These stunningly high rates of medical errors, resulting in deaths, permanent disability and unnecessary suffering, are simply unacceptable in a medical system that promises first to ‘do no harm,'” said William C. Richardson, president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and chairman of the expert committee that compiled the findings.
Here’s the deeper problem: the conventional medical system is based entirely on the treatment of disease with drugs or surgery, both extraordinarily expensive. Each new drug produced costs the manufacturer an average of $500 million to get to the production line. Therefore, drug companies charge outrageous prices for their drugs. Hospital building costs and the cost of continual technological upgrades are a major cause of medical inflation, yet these expenses do not necessarily translate into better care or more successful treatments.
The conventional medical establishment has convinced the general population that we can’t take care of our own health, we need expensive technology and procedures to diagnose what’s wrong, that the cause of disease is outside of the realm of our control, and that the answer to every health problem is either a drug or surgery. Conventional medical doctors tend to scare patients into expensive and invasive procedures before they have a chance to think about it, get a second opinion, or seek an alternative.
However, there is a small but growing number of doctors who are in a response to public outcry, Congress appropriated $2 million for the creation of an Office of Alternative Medicine, under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the possibility of finding safer, more effective, and less costly ways of healing. Here are a few examples.
Cardiovascular Disease
Conventional Therapy:
Drugs, Coronary Bypass Surgery, Balloon Angioplasty, Carotid Artery Bypass.
Cost of Conventional Therapy:
More money is spent in America on Cardiovascular disease than any other illness — approximately $200 billion annually, nevertheless it is still the number one killer. Every year more than 500,000 coronary bypass surgeries are performed in the U.S. at an average cost of about $40,000. That’s a whopping $20 billion total. Another 1,244,000 patients undergo coronary angioplasty or get coronary stents. Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of illness and death in the U.S., with an estimated direct cost in the U.S. of $210 billion in 2003, including $94 billion in in-hospital costs alone.
In spite of the high price tag, a study from Brigham & Women’s Hospital, in Boston, found that 84% of the recommended bypass surgeries investigated was unnecessary and the risk of death from coronary bypass surgery averages 2.25%. That means that approximately 11,250 patients die every year because of the procedure. Additionally, up to 33% of all patients who undergo bypass surgery suffer some transient or permanent neurological damage or decrease in IQ. Fifty percent of bypassed arteries clog up again within 5 years, and 80% become blocked again within 7 years.
The Coronary Artery Surgery Study concluded that patients who received bypass surgery experienced no significant improvement in longevity or incidence of heart attacks over the group treated only with medication. In fact, in those patients with two blocked coronary arteries, yet good strong heart function, the bypass operation actually increased their death rate 7 years later.
Natural Therapy:
Diet; exercise; specific nutritional supplements. There is now conclusive proof from clinical trials, published in the Lancet, that clogged arteries can be opened and cardiovascular disease reversed by diet, exercise and life-style changes. Active lifestyle modification as described by Dr. Dean Ornish, M.D. costs about $7500 in the first year and nominally more thereafter.( Cowley G, Hager M, Springen K. Healer of hearts. Newsweek. 1998:50)
Currently, about 40 insurance companies cover Ornish’s lifestyle modification program, and Medicare is considering covering it.
The potential savings to the US economy of shifting the emphasis on Coronary Artery Disease treatment from invasive cardiology surgical procedures to lifestyle modification is substantial.
Cost of alternative therapy:
The cost of a proven nutritional therapy for hardening of the arteries is approximately $7500. That is 81.25% less than the cost of surgery. Here are the numbers: $3.75 million ($7500 X 500,000) vs. $20 billion ($40,000 X 500,000) for surgery.
Estimated savings:
Prevention is the key. According to the study by Brigham & Women’s Hospital, 84% of all Coronary Surgeries are unnecessary. Preventing this 84% of the current annual 500,000 bypass surgeries would save $16.8 billion annually (420,000 X $40,000). Nutritional reversal of cardiovascular disease is safer, more effective, and costs only 18.75% as much as the risky, less effective, surgical procedure.
High Blood Pressure
Conventional Therapy:
Diuretics, Sympathetic Nervous System Depressant Drugs, Vasodilator Drugs, Addition of a second Sympathetic Nervous System Depressant Drug.
Cost of Conventional Therapy:
73.6 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure. Three fourths of that 60 million (73.6 million X 69% = 51 million) are on blood pressure lowering drugs. Blood pressure lowering drugs on average cost $600 per year per person. That’s $600 X 45 million people for a total cost of $30 billion spent every year to treat high blood pressure.
Not only is conventional treatment expensive, but it causes significant negative side-effects, including fatigue, listlessness, weakness, dry mouth, sedation, depression, impotence, high blood sugar, GI irritation, and insomnia.
What’s more, studies have shown that blood pressure lowering drugs do not extend longevity or reverse coronary heart disease. In fact in approximately one half of the studies, patients receiving these drugs had more nonfatal heart attacks and more fatal heart attacks than the patients who were not given the drugs.
Natural Therapy:
Diet consisting of no more than 20% fat, with no more than 6% saturated fat (as is found in meat and dairy products), 65-70% Carbohydrate and 10-15% Protein from whole grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes; Garlic Supplementation; Magnesium Supplementation; Tobacco, Caffeine, and Alcohol cessation; Exercise; and Stress Management.
Cost of Natural Therapy:
-$1076 (Net savings of $1076 per person annually.) The cost of the Garlic and Magnesium Supplementation is approximately $384 per year. However, the savings of this mostly vegetarian diet is at least $2 per day and $730 per year compared to the cost of the Standard American Diet. The savings of quitting cigarettes, caffeine, and alcohol is at least $2 per day, and $730 per year. Therefore, the gross savings is $1460 per person annually ($730 + $730 = $1460). This $1460 in savings minus $384 in costs, gives a net savings of $1076.
Estimated savings:
Total savings: $75.42 billion: $30 billion from not using drugs plus $54.9 billion additional savings from the diet and life-style changes ($1076 X 51 million = $54.9 billion).
Child birth
Conventional Therapy:
4.26 million babies are born in the U.S. every year. A new ten year study conducted by a team of doctors from Canada’s McMasters University and Oxford University in England reports that much of what doctors and hospitals do for pregnancy and birth is wrong, expensive and dangerous. Dr. Marc Keirse concluded, “Having a doctor involved in all pregnancies can be a bad thing. You get more technology, more hospital infections, more unhappy mothers and more cost.”
“It comes down to whether you consider pregnancy and birth pathological (disease) or physiological (normal) events,” says Dr. Keirse. “As soon as a doctor shows his face, everything turns toward disease. It’s hard to accept that having obstetricians at all deliveries is a bad thing. Yet, if you have well-trained midwives, very few deliveries need a specialist present. In the Netherlands, 30% of all women deliver safely at home.”
The Cesarean-section rate in the United States is another example of overuse and unnecessary medicine. It is among the highest in the world. It jumped from 5.5% of all births in 1970 to 24.4% in 1987 to 33% in 2007. The major reason for the increase appears to be the decreased respect for the nature and the natural process of life, the increased use of technology, including internal fetal monitoring, and the schedule of the doctor.
Cost of Conventional Therapy:
$8800 for an uncomplicated delivery X 2.8 million deliveries = $24.6 billion; $11,500 for a C-Section X 1.4 million deliveries annually = $16.1 billion;
Natural Therapy:
The Public Citizen, a health research organization, headed by Sydney Wolfe, M.D., estimates that at least half of the more than 1 million C-sections performed in this country annually are unnecessary, subjecting mothers to a fourfold increased risk of death during childbirth.
Dr. Wolfe says that the high C-section rate in the U.S. is driven by a fear of malpractice law suits, the convenience of doctors, the higher fee involved, the use of drugs and procedures that slow down or impede the natural labor and delivery process, and the outdated notion that it is unsafe for a woman who has had one C-section to have a vaginal delivery for subsequent children. Midwives have fewer complications because they generally spend more time with their patients teaching them proper nutrition during pregnancy. They allow their patients to walk, stand, or squat during labor using gravity to help nature along. Homeopathic remedies tested in double blind clinical trials in France are used to decrease the length of labor and delivery and reduce the number of complications.
Cost of Natural Therapy:
Natural Childbirth is normal vaginal delivery without the use of an anesthetic spinal tap. Moms who have had uncomplicated pregnancies may choose to let labor begin on its own, eliminating the need for a sometimes costly induction that may be difficult for both mom and baby. Some moms even choose not to use pain medications during their labors, using breathing techniques, visualization, and music to cope with the pain of labor. With no anesthesia, the associated costs of the IV or epidural catheter insertion and the anesthesiologist’s own charges are eliminated. Also, the newborn may be more alert after an unmedicated or natural birth, making the need for resuscitation and specialized newborn care less likely.
Estimated savings:
$1000 X $2.8 million uncomplicated deliveries = $2.8 billion saved; Eliminating half of the 1.4 million C-sections performed annually in the U.S. that are considered unnecessary and delivering those babies by conventional vaginal delivery would save $2,700 X 700,000 deliveries = $1.9 billion dollars saved annually.
Uterine Fibroids
Conventional Therapy:
One out of every three American women will have her uterus removed by the time she is 60 years old. Currently there are 600,000 hysterectomies performed in this country every year.
Few would argue against a hysterectomy in cases where the uterus is the site of a life threatening cancer. However, only 10% of all hysterectomies in the U.S. are performed for this reason. Hysterectomies are most commonly prescribed for benign uterine fibroids and heavy menstrual bleeding that affects millions of American women.
Cost of Conventional Therapy:
$5145 X 540,000 (number of hysterectomies for non cancers) = 2.8 billion.
Natural Therapy:
There is a natural treatment for uterine fibroids using nutrition, certain herbs and natural, bio-identical hormone therapy.
Cost of Natural therapy:
$1000 X 540,000 = $540 million.
Estimated savings:
$2.3 billion annually.
Prostate Enlargement
Conventional Therapy:
Surgery; Drugs: Finasteride, Terazosin
Cost of Conventional Therapy:
$4 billion: $2 billion for surgery ($5000 X 400,000 men); $2 billion for drug therapy ($1020 per person per year X 2 million men)
Natural Therapy:
Oral capsules of an extract from the plant Serenoa repens (Saw palmetto) have been shown in double-blind clinical trials to be more effective than the drug Finasteride (Proscar) and to have fewer side effects. This herb is commonly used in Europe for this condition.
Cost of Natural Therapy:
$300 annually X 2.4 million men per year = $720 million annually.
Estimated savings:
Total savings: $ 3.28 billion
Peptic Ulcers
Conventional Therapy:
Drugs: Tagamet, Zantac, Pepcid, Prilosec, Carafate.
Cost of Conventional Therapy:
$2 billion annually.
Natural Therapy:
Extract of the plant Licorice root (deglycyrrhizinated licorice, or DGL, a special type of Licorice which prevents Potassium loss). Studies have shown that DGL is more effective than Tagamet or Zantac in healing peptic ulcers and preventing recurrences, with fewer side effects.
Cost of Natural Therapy:
Approximately one-third that of conventional drug therapy.
Estimated Savings:
$1.33 billion annually.
PREVENTION I s T h e S o l u t i o n
The current health care system is not a health care system at all, it is a disease care system. It spends very little time promoting health because it’s not profitable. It spends most of its time treating disease. It ignores the major precipitating causes of all the chronic diseases–poor diet and life-style choices–allowing their progression over a period of years or decades, prescribing drugs to treat the symptoms, until a crisis to occurs, when doctors can then declare a state of emergency and intervene with extraordinarily expensive and invasive procedures.
Too much time and money is being spent at the wrong end of the spectrum. Waiting until a patient has a heart attack to treat their heart disease is like waiting until the engine in your car burns up before you realize it’s out of oil. All you need to prevent thousands of dollars of engine repair is a twenty dollar oil change every 3000 miles.
Heart disease, cancer, and stroke, in that order, are the three leading causes of death in this country. Diabetes ranks number seven. These are chronic degenerative diseases that develop slowly over a period of years and they are for the most part preventable. Taken together, the treatment of all chronic diseases accounts for 85% of the total national health care bill, a whopping $574 billion dollars.
Preventable Chronic Disease
Disease % Preventable
Heart Disease 54
Cancer 37
Cerebrovascular 50
Hardening of the Arteries 49
Diabetes 26
Average % 43
Source: CDC, Public Health Service, 1975
The major cause of our current health care crisis is due to the fact that most doctors, 99% of them, are simply not trained in prevention or nutrition, in fact they are taught that nutrition doesn’t matter. Most doctors have a strong negative bias against nutrition. Quite simply it is a threat to their income. If diet is the cause of disease, then diet is the cure.
Conventional Medicine simply does not want to admit that it is wrong: that diet does matter. Such an admission would take away a doctor’s prestige and a patient’s need for sophisticated technology, expensive drugs and surgical procedures. It would mean that patients could take charge of their own health by changing their diet. The fact is diet does matter. A poor diet causes heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, gall stones, arthritis, and more, and a good diet can prevent them and cure them. The most important aspect of the health care equation, which is being overlooked, is PREVENTION!
The secret to solving the health care crisis lies in the fulfillment of Thomas Edison’s vision of the doctor of the future. It is the only way we will be able to significantly reduce the mammoth health care costs and improve our health at the same time. The problem with the currently dominant medical system is the system itself. Disease care is expensive. True health care, which by definition implies wellness and prevention, is far healthier for the economy and our total well being.
Dr. Hansen’s Prescription
My prescription to solve the health care crisis includes two key elements: knowledge and responsibility. Doctors must become more knowledgeable in nutrition and patients must become more responsible for managing their own heath care.
Even though volumes of scientific evidence now clearly show that diet and nutrition play a key role in the major health problems in the U.S., more than 70% of the graduates of conventional, allopathic, medical schools in the U.S. receive absolutely no required training in clinical nutrition.
Naturopathic medical schools, on the other hand, have led the way in clinical nutritional education for more than a century. Today’s naturopathic physicians receive more than 200 required classroom hours in clinical nutrition and another 1200 hours in clinical medical practice during the course of their training. In allopathic medical schools only 21 hours, on average, are given to only a few nutritional topics such as Iron Deficiency Anemia and requirements for Potassium replacement due to diuretic drug therapy.
Patients deserve to be taught by their doctors since the word “doctor” means teacher. However, patients also need to become more self-reliant. They need to take advantage of the age of information that we live in. The knowledge is available and growing every year.
Don’t wait for Nationalized Health Care. It will only be less of the same. I recommend buying a catastrophic medical policy to insure yourself and your family against a major illness such as a serious accident, personal injury, or some unusual unpreventable illness that would require reconstructive surgery, intensive care, or, heaven forbid, a prolonged hospital stay.
Learn to prevent heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, gall stones, arthritis, cataracts, and glaucoma. Learn to treat allergies, asthma, bumps, bruises, coughs, colds, fevers, infections, etc. at home. You can take charge of your own health. The body is the real healer; not doctors and not drugs. Vibrant health, a sharp mind and boundless energy are your birth right. Its yours for the taking.