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.
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