White House Health Care Reform - Lip Service?

The two people who are to lead the new White House Office of Health Reform - Tom Daschle and Jeanne Lambrew - co-authored a book earlier this year titled "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crises." As government officials, their expressions ought to be part of the public domain, and known to everyone. And so I share a few tastes of their thoughts on health care, since they will have much to do with its reform in the coming months and years:

1) "There are many factors driving up health care costs. One problem is that 'supply side' forces exist in our health-care system. Physicians both diagnose and treat illness - in economic terms, they create and satisfy demand. . . . Conditions such as 'restless leg syndrome' weren't conditions until drugs were developed to treat them."

There is a curious tendency in conventional medicine
to name a set of symptoms a disease. I was recently
at a compounding pharmacy having my bone mineral
density measured to update my health stats. I
spotted a poster touting a new drug for osteoporosis.
It was written by a drug company and it said
exactly this: 'Osteoporosis is a disease that causes
weak and fragile bones.' Then, the poster went on to
say that you need a particular drug to counteract this 'disease.'

Yet the language is all backwards. Osteoporosis isn't
a disease that causes weak bones, osteoporosis is
the name given to a diagnosis of weak bones. In other
words, the weak bones are the result of excess acidity,
and then the diagnosis of osteoporosis followed.

The drug poster makes it sound like osteoporosis
strikes first, and then you get weak bones. The
cause and effect is all backwards. And that's
how drug companies want people to think about
diseases and symptoms: first you 'get' the dis-ease,
and then you are 'diagnosed' just in time to take
a new drug for the rest of your life.

But it's all an illuision. There is no such
disease as osteoporosis. It's just a made-up name
given to a pattern of symptoms that indicates
you are over-acid which causes your bones to
become fragile.

As another example, when a person follows an
unhealthy lifestyle that results in a symptom
such as high blood pressure, that symptom is
actually being assumed to be a disease all by
itself and it will be given a disease name.
What disease? The dis-ease is, of course,
'hypertension' or 'high blood pressure.'
Doctors throw this phrase around as if it
were an actual dis-ease and not merely
descriptive of patient physiology.

This may all seem silly, right? But there's
actually a very important point to all this.

When we look at symptoms and give them disease
names, we automatically distort the selection
of available treatments for such a dis-ease.
If the dis-ease is, by itself, hypercholesterolemia
or high cholesterol, then the cure for the dis-ease
must be nothing other than lowering the high
cholesterol. And that's how we end up with all
these pharmaceuticals treating high cholesterol
in order to 'prevent' this dis-ease and lower
the levels of LDL cholesterol in the human patient.

By lowering only the cholesterol, the doctor can
rest assured that he is, in fact, treating this
'disease,' since the definition of this 'disease'
is hypercholesterolemia or high cholesterol and
nothing else.

But there is a fatal flaw in this approach to
disease treatment: the symptom is not the cause
of the dis-ease. There is another cause, and
this deeper cause is routinely ignored by
conventional medicine, doctors, drug companies,
and even patients. The cause of ALL dis-ease is
over-acidic lifestyle and dietary choices.

2) "We seem to assume that high-tech medicine can only be better than low-tech medicine, that more medical care is better, that newer is better, and that more aggressive is better. Yet sometimes it isn't so." [Quoting from Deyo & Patrick, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises, New York AMACOM, 2005]

3) "[S]pecial interests are especially numerous and influential in the health-care system. Health care comprises one-sixth of our economy, and the savings we seek will come out of executive's salaries and companies' profits. In terms of political clout, the health-care industry is second to none."

4) "Between 1998 and 2006, pharmaceutical companies and other manufacturers of health-care products spent over a billion dollars on lobbying, more than anybody else and twice as much as the oil and gas industries. Insurance companies, including health insurers, ranked second."

5) "Since cutting costs is tantamount to cutting profits for many of these special interests, it is reasonable to expect them to engage in all-out war to defeat reform."

Strong words that suggest our "reformers of health care" understand just a few of the challenges. But do they have the vision to craft the best solution? Their book makes no real mention of natural holistic health care, or its important role in prevention and cure. LET'S HELP THEM CONNECT THE DOTS! Write them. Write your own letter and send it to:

The White House Office of Health Reform
Attn: Sen. Tom Daschle & Deputy Director Jeanne Lambrew
c/o Center for American Progress
1333 H St. N.W. 10th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005

Please tell them that natural holistic health care must have a fundamental role in the reform of health care NOW. The cure for dis-ease and disease can only be found in its prevention not its treatment. Dis-ease and disease is something we do not something we get. We do not need more medicine we need more education on how to take care and maintain the alkaline design of our body.