Alternative
Medicine
2007
Part Two
The End of Medicine As
We Know It
(Including Alt Med)
© By Peter Barry Chowka
(January 15, 2007) Periodically in recent years, I have given extensive thought to – and often written about – the future of alternative medicine in the brave new world that is now upon us. In 2005, I asked the question “Is alternative medicine dead?” On January 1, 2007, I suggested that the answer, sadly, is “yes.”
Now, a mere two weeks later, the question could be expanded to “Is medicine itself (or, more appropriately, is the entire art of healing) dead?” The answer there, too, would have to be a qualified “yes.” At the least, medicine as we know it – that has helped to sustain us since the dawn of civilization – is on life support.
These observations are offered in the midst – and because – of health care suddenly becoming a leading, and possibly the number one, issue on the domestic political landscape. Politicians finally feel emboldened to take on and do something about the public’s supposed frustration and dissatisfaction with the medical status quo. Their proposals and solutions, however, whatever their intentions, promise to further weaken and ultimately destroy the American system of medicine, the good with the bad.
Twelve years ago, in the wake of the Republican takeover of Congress and the failure of the overarching plan by President Bill and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to enact sweeping national health care “reform,” efforts to establish socialized medicine in the United States (which all of these proposals essentially represent) went on the back burner. The expansion of the federal government’s role in health care continued, however, incrementally and unabated, as it has since the end of World War Two.
A few essential points – politically incorrect in the extreme in today’s nanny state climate of endless entitlements – need to be kept in mind here. In 1994, Stan Liebowitz, a professor of managerial economics in the Management School of the University of Texas at Dallas, wrote an article, “Why Health Care Costs Too Much,” which effectively deconstructs Medicare, the federal system enacted in 1965 to provide health care to older Americans and which serves as the model for many proponents of universal health care today. Liebowitz convincingly shows how the federal government, in setting up a centralized system to pay for seniors’ health care, has caused medical inflation overall to explode, with the increase in costs correlated most precisely in areas that are paid for most heavily by Medicare, like hospitalization. Ironically, because of this inflation, supporters of further Medicare expansion can once again today cry “crisis” and demand more government intervention. As another writer, Sue Blevins, director of the Institute for Health Freedom, has noted, in a bizarre twist it actually costs an American senior citizen today a greater percentage of his or her income to pay for health care (the supposed benefits of Medicare notwithstanding) than it did in the 1950s before Medicare.
These and other anomalies are explained by the fact that effectively resolving the health care needs of the elderly was not the primary purpose of Medicare’s original designers at all. (Nor is it the objective of most of today’s proponents of expanding medical coverage to the uninsured.) Rather, the true purpose involves the expansion of government until it assumes complete responsibility for everyone’s health care, regardless of what is really best for people. An indication of this fact came on July 30, 2003, the 38th anniversary of the signing of the Medicare law. On that morning, Robert Ball, an extremely influential high level policymaker in the fields of Social Security and Medicare – Ball was the Commissioner of Social Security Administration from 1962-1973 and was present when the Medicare law was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 – was interviewed live on C-Span’s morning program, Washington Journal.
According to Ball, “Truman was the first president to advocate universal health insurance for the country as a whole [in the late 1940s]. But it was clear that the Congress would not pass his recommendation. So some of us who were interested in the universal plan kind of backed up and said, ‘Well, what can we pass? Just from a practical standpoint.’ And the answer was, coverage of a health insurance plan for the elderly. . .We thought, well, this is a plan and a group [the elderly] that could be covered politically so let’s go with that. That’s how it came about that we started the coverage under health insurance for the elderly group.”
Speaking in 2003, Ball, who at the time was 89, still hoped for Medicare’s expansion: “Medicare needs of course to be expanded to prescription drugs. . .a real extension of prescription drugs. . . I would bring together [Medicare] parts A and B - part B is a coverage of doctors on a voluntary basis. I would bring them together in a total compulsory plan [emphasis added]. . . I would propose expanding that to all children in the country, to bring down the age of eligibility below 65, first to 60 and then on lower and lower so in the end, you would be raising the age of eligibility, which would start out with the coverage of children, and bringing it down it down from Medicare’s coverage of those 65 and older until you have a universal plan. Until we have what I call ‘Medicare for all.’”
The New Majority, Sen. Kennedy, and “Medicare for All”
|
|
|
Sen.
Edward M. (Teddy) Kennedy |
On January 4th, 2007 the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress and in the ten days since then the leaders of their party (including presumed and announced candidates for president Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Rodham Clinton) have made various proposals for enacting mandatory universal health care – both in individual states and nationally. After a half century of waiting, Social Security-Medicare guru Robert Ball’s dreams are finally coming true. The weak dike that held back the complete centralization and government takeover of American health care for the past several decades has burst, and the outlook now is that the greatest changes in health care delivery since the nation was founded will actually take place, and soon. With these changes, the eradication of true alternative medicine will be complete.
What will have done in alt med will not have been the so-called quackbusters or other visible opponents of alt med, but the system – a word used in the 1960s to give some coherent form to the essential elements of American life that provide the controlling context – including the economic and political power structure, the mainstream media, academia, “experts,” and so on.
That system, which once championed individualism, self-reliance, personal responsibility, free market competitiveness, and limited government, has now morphed into an interlocked nexus of special and conflicted interests that have made peace with – or actually work on behalf of – the kind of collectivism, statism, globalism, and coercion that at one time characterized the old Soviet Union.
On January 9th, according to news accounts, “The federal government should join the state of Massachusetts in enacting universal health coverage, said Sen. Edward Kennedy, the new chairman of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over numerous health issues. . . Kennedy has his own version of what universal health coverage would look like. He wants to extend Medicare to all” [emphasis added].
On January 9th, Kennedy, who has been championing mandatory government-run medicine for 35 years (I covered a speech he gave promoting socialized medicine at Georgetown University’s School of Medicine in the fall of 1971), chaired a Senate hearing, as he described it, “on the fundamental issue of how to help the nation’s families afford quality health care.” (Translation: How to enact mandatory, government-controlled allopathic medicine.)
|
|
|
George Orwell (1903-1950) |
The late George Orwell, the author of the chillingly prophetic 1949 novel 1984, who excelled at predicting the dystopian future and exploring propaganda (giving it the names “newspeak” and “doublethink” – examples: “war is peace,” “freedom is slavery,” “ignorance is strength”), might be interested to know how Kennedy et al are spinning their statist health care modus operandi as “making health care more affordable.” Doublethink, according to Wikipedia, is “the act of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, fervently believing both, despite being notionally aware of their incompatibility – rather, being willfully unaware.” (As noted above, government meddling in health care over the years has achieved the opposite effect of actually making it more affordable.)
A parade of leading Democrats has joined Kennedy in espousing a greatly expanded government role in health care, ranging from statist health care light – insuring every child in the U.S. – to the more immediately draconian plan of forcing everyone living in the U.S. to become part of a coercive government-run allopathic medical system – or else face the consequences.
Republicans for Universal Health Care
The political center has moved so far to the left that even many Republicans are jumping on the pro-government-run health care bandwagon. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a presumed candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, has made a central part of his emerging national campaign for the nation’s top job the fact that he proposed, and saw passage in his state of, a law mandating that every Massachusetts resident have allopathic medical insurance. (The state picks up some or most of the cost for anyone making less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level.)
Even more significant than what’s taken hold in the state where the American Revolution began are developments in California, the nation’s largest and probably the single most influential state. After giving indications that he would propose a government-run plan to insure all children in California, second term Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced on January 8th that the new law he was in fact proposing mandates that everyone in California, of any age (not only children), will be forced to carry allopathic medical insurance – again with the state government picking up much of the tab.
Billions of dollars in new taxes will be called for. And angering many legal state residents, Schwarzenegger also wants the new law to include coverage for illegal aliens in California, whose exact number is unknown although it is probably in the neighborhood of six million or more. The irony is that the cost of providing health care to illegal immigrants in recent years (according to federal law they cannot be refused care) has contributed to the health care crisis that is cited by politicians as the reason that such radical action as they are proposing now needs to be taken.
(The Los Angeles Times reported on December 23, 2006, for example, that California’s Medicaid program already spends more than $400 million annually on childbirth-related care – including pregnancy tests, prenatal care and postnatal checkups – for illegal immigrants. The North County Times reported on January 7th that “A state report quietly released last spring shows illegal immigrants made up the largest single group of those giving birth at taxpayer expense in the state and in San Diego County in 2004. The May report, ‘Medi-Cal Funded Deliveries,’ states that of the 14,350 taxpayer-funded births in the county that year, 5,814, or 40.5 percent, were to illegal immigrants.” According to the Dallas Morning News [June 12, 2006], at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, the facility where President John F. Kennedy was taken, and pronounced dead, after he was shot on November 22, 1963, “a recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants, hospital officials said.”)
On January 4th, the Federation for American Immigration Reform issued a statement in response to initial news reports suggesting that Schwarzenegger would soon propose to insure every child in California, including the children of illegal aliens: “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to provide health coverage to every child in California, including illegal aliens, could leave the state liable for untold billions in unforeseen costs in the future, warns the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The conservatively estimated cost of $400 million a year could easily balloon to many times that figure. Costs will grow as the numbers of illegal aliens in California increase and may rise even more dramatically as legal residents of other states take advantage of a federal law that requires that state benefits made available to illegal aliens must be made available to all legal U.S. residents.
“The irony of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal to publicly fund health insurance for an estimated 6.5 million residents who lack basic coverage is that illegal immigration has been one of the key factors in creating millions of uninsured Californians. A large percentage of U.S. citizen children without coverage are the offspring of illegal immigrants. Moreover, the presence of millions of low-wage illegal aliens in the California labor force has led to many employers dropping coverage that they used to provide to workers and their families.”
Politicians in a number of other states are also proposing various kinds of state-wide universal allopathic medical coverage, usually requiring new taxes and mandatory participation by all state residents. Among the states that are suddenly moving fast on this issue are Connecticut, Missouri, Louisiana, Iowa, Washington, and Maryland. On January 8th, USA Today described these state efforts as “aggressive and potentially expensive.” Quickly rising health care costs and inflation are often cited as a reason for the new push. But ironically, it was reported on January 9th, U.S. health care spending increased 6.9% in 2005, the third consecutive year that the growth rate declined, according to an annual government report published in the January/February 2007 issue of Health Affairs. The 2005 growth rate was the lowest reported since 1999.
Universal Health Care Implications
One might think that supporters, consumers, and practitioners of alternative medicine would be extremely wary of, if not outright opposed to, governments (state and federal) expanding their role in or taking over the whole practice of health care in the U.S. But there has been a deafening silence from alt med, or complementary alternative medicine, circles. Some supposed leaders of alt med have even thrown in their lot with the collectivists. Two years ago, the influential Foundation for Alternative Medicine, founded by former Rep. Berkley Bedell (D-IA) (Bedell is credited with being one of the godfathers of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine), cited the communist dictatorship of Cuba as “a model for alternative medicine” in the U.S. Others seem little disturbed by the prospects of government-controlled health care; many even welcome the transition.
It should be – but apparently it isn’t – obvious what “universal health care” will likely mean, not only to the practice of alternative medicine but to any unconventional, innovative, truly traditional, or “unproven” forms of medicine:
1. Privacy under government-run medicine will be completely lost. For the system to function, the government and its armies of bureaucrats must know the complete medical histories of everyone in the country, including the most intimate personal details. To that end, proponents of state run health care are pushing electronic medical records. The records of everyone’s financial and employment histories will also be folded into the medical system, since how much one is expected to pay (in terms of new taxes or user fees) for “affordable health care” will be determined by complex formulas based on one’s or ones family’s income and net worth.
2. Individualized clinical care will be a thing of the past. In countries where the state runs the medical system, physicians’ and other medical professionals’ hands are constrained, if not completely tied, clinically. The state calls the shots. Rationing of care, an inevitability under a supposedly “equitable,” mandatory, no opt-out system, results in the enforcement of bureaucratic decisions like ordering physicians to delay patients’ surgery to save money and even forbidding people who smoke cigarettes, who drink alcohol, or who are obese from being scheduled for surgery. These caveats are becoming the policy in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), which has provided government-run health care to British residents since 1948.
3. Centralizing health care under government control brings down the quality. The British system of national medicine is in crisis and has been for years. According to one physician’s personal view published January 13th in the British Medical Journal, “common complaints” (on NHS wards) “include never seeing a nurse except when drugs are being handed out, days going by without any contact with senior medical staff, having to virtually beg for help moving up the bed or getting to the toilet, and repeated requests for pain relief.”
4. Many kinds of innovation, as well as unapproved treatments, will become crimes. Along with the loss of privacy and individualized care, standards of treatment based on the deeply flawed but currently hot concept of “evidence based medicine” (EBM) will dictate which treatments are even allowed. EBM is especially threatening to alternative medicine, as one new article contends.
The Truth Is Out There
As a journalist, it is occasionally the case that a past interview, sound bite, or factoid generated as part of the process of researching previous stories stays in mind and ultimately becomes definitive. In this case, three sets of comments by different individuals over a period of fifteen years are recalled.
In 1977, as I was preparing an in-depth review and analysis of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the late Dean Burk, Ph.D., a founder of the NCI in 1937 and a renowned scientist who was long interested in innovative and alternative methods, told me “In science and medicine, like in everything else, the scum eventually rises to the top.”
In 1993, I was doing research on an earlier incarnation of government-run medicine – the Clintons’ proposals to centralize and nationalize all American health care. In an interview that year, Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., who practices nutritional cancer treatments in New York City, commented that national health care reform “could be the end of alternative medicine.” The government health care reformers, according to Gonzalez, “think that the reason people are sick is that they don’t have enough high-tech medicine. But high-tech medicine doesn’t even work for rich people! The real reason that people are sick is that orthodox medicine is asking the wrong questions. . . The goal of health care reform is to have a dictionary in Washington listing ‘acceptable’ treatments. If you look up ‘breast cancer,’ there are the ‘acceptable’ treatments – and anything else will be disallowed. They essentially want all doctors to conform to government standards.” (Twelve years after making these comments, Gonzalez and I had a conversation about socialized medicine that can be accessed here.)
Reinforcing Gonzalez’ points, also in 1993, journalist Jon Rappoport told me “The main strategy [of the health care reformers] is excommunication into the outer darkness. If you’re a holistic doctor and they don’t like what you’re doing, you’ll be guilty of practicing ‘illegal medicine’ and they can just disconnect you from the plan and banish you completely. Then you’re no longer in the grid, you’re just out there somewhere.”