Feds blame US health care system, not poor diet and lack of exercise, for widespread heart disease

Monday, February 07, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: heart disease, health care, health news

(NaturalNews) Political agendas often make the government say some pretty strange and illogical statements at times, including a recent announcement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that the U.S. health care system, not a poor diet and lack of exercise, is responsible for causing heart disease. The announcement was conveniently made as the U.S. Congress and numerous U.S. states are challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare.

The CDC began playing logical gymnastics when it started blaming a lack of universal health care coverage on excessive rates of high blood pressure and cholesterol. According to the agency, two-thirds of people with these conditions are not being treated effectively for their conditions. So, the CDC is pushing for "policy and system changes" to address this.

Of course, such changes infer things like universal coverage and more government involvement in telling people when and how to be treated, including taking blood pressure and cholesterol medications for their conditions. But the agency also says that many of the people with such heart conditions already have health coverage. They are just not prescribing to the CDC's preferred methods of treatment.

But it hardly stops there. The CDC took its argument further, insisting that Obamacare will help fix the situation by requiring health insurers to pay for blood pressure and cholesterol screenings for patients, as well as encourage the use of electronic medical records. Nevermind the fact that the majority of patients with these conditions already have health coverage; the CDC is convinced that if people roll over and accept the new health care system without question, health will somehow improve.

And it remains unclear exactly how using electronic medical records, which happen to be highly controversial, will lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. But this hardly matters to government officials who seem willing to do anything to get them imposed.

If the CDC was really concerned about lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as stemming the tide of heart disease that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, it would start working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to eliminate things like chemical additives and trans fats from food, fluoride from water, and artificials sweeteners from beverages. It would also work to eliminate harmful genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) from the food supply, as well as get rid of the dangerous chemical pesticides and herbicides used on food crops that continue to destroy health.

But the federal government's agenda is to control the U.S. health care system, not to actually improve health. So it will instead grasp at straws to scare the public into conceding with goals that will do nothing to stop disease and everything to increase its control over how people deal with it.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/...