In fact, much of the system is geared towards keeping people sick -- because that's what generates repeat business. DIsease prevention efforts are stonewalled at the FDA, good nutrition is almost never taught at medical schools, and drug companies continue to dominate the direction of so-called "modern" medicine. Why? Because drugs generate profits.
Organized medicine is the largest con ever perpetrated on the American people (right up there with the war on Iraq). Drug companies invent fictitious diseases like ADHD and fear of public speaking, dishonest medical researchers are hired to manipulate drug study results, the FDA approves the drugs based on the fraudulent results, then drug companies legally bribe doctors into prescribing the drugs to patients. Once a drug is firmly established in the medical system, more research is fraudulently conducted to convince people that they need the drugs "for life." Take the recent research on statins, for example: the drugs are almost completely worthless for preventing heart attacks, showing a very tiny effect that is dwarfed by a mere 10 minutes a day of physical exercise, and yet the drug industry demands that tens of millions of people start taking statins every day for the rest of their lives! What a brilliant con! Amazingly, doctors are going along with the con, too.
Yet in the case of statins and other drugs, nobody talks about the side effects: like the fact that statins destroy your body's ability to generate sex hormones, causing men to lose their sex drive. There's also the fact that most drugs are nothing more than grand experiments where the public is being used as guinea pigs. The true impact of these drugs will only be known years later, and even then, you can bet that the FDA will drag its feet pulling dangerous drugs off the market, making sure the drug generates the maximum profit possible, regardless of how many people are harmed.
See, we don't really have a health care system in the United States: we have a system of corporate greed that parades as medicine. It's really a system of exploiting the public for power and profits, and the primary players are drug companies, medical schools, medical journals (which have drifted so far from credibility that their "scientific" publications can only be called laughable), and of course the FDA. It's a system of extreme corruption, where greed -- not health -- remains the primary driving force.
Now, if you want to create the best health care system in the world, here's what you do: 1) ban all direct-to-consumer drug advertising. 2) Arrest and prosecute FDA officials for their crimes against the public, clean house at the agency, and install a new Dept. of Internal Affairs at the FDA. 3) Ban drug companies from influencing medical schools in any way. 4) Ban drug companies from bribing doctors with free trips to Hawaii, free dinners, and other obvious bribes. 5) Ban medical journals from accepting advertising from drug companies. 6) Make disease prevention, nutrition and physical fitness the top priorities at all medical schools. 7) Invest taxpayer dollars in large-scale public service announcement campaigns to teach people how to be healthy in terms of nutrition and physical exercise. 8) Ban all metabolic disruptors from the food supply (ingredients like high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils). 9) Use taxpayer dollars to make all fitness center memberships free of charge to all citizens (give a $40 / month credit to every adult, allowing them to shop around and choose whatever fitness center they want). 10) End the ridiculous taxpayer subsidies on corn and sugar. Foods that cause disease should not be made cheaper for consumers, they should be made more expensive.
There are probably a hundred other suggestions that would improve the situation, but these 10 represent a good, solid start. If we want to be healthy, we've got to make major policy changes and start putting health, not drug company profits, as our top priority.
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