Originally published July 3 2008
The Politics of National Health Care Reform: Why no Popular Presidential Candidate can Solve Our Health Care Crisis (transcript)
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) The following is a transcript of Health Ranger Report #16, entitled The Politics of National Health Care Reform, which is available free of charge as an MP3 download at: http://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Podcasts.ht...
Have you ever wondered who is going to win the presidency in the United States and what affects that might have on health care? Now people are terrified over the healthcare issue today. You probably have experienced some of this yourself.
You stay in a lousy job that you do not like just because they offer healthcare insurance and you are afraid that if you lose that job or quit you will not be able to find health coverage anywhere because if you try to buy it privately they nail you over pre-existing conditions. You have been paying into that system year after year after year -- huge amounts of dollars every month -- and then they deny you coverage.
That is the way the system works today and it is a system that is designed to keep you diseased and bankrupt. I am going to tell you about that system, how it works, and why no presidential candidate that has a chance of winning now has any kind of realistic solution for the healthcare crisis that is facing our nation. Not just the people but also the employers -- the companies that are footing the bill for this as well. That is one reason why so many jobs are leaving our shores.
They are being offshored to countries that have better healthcare systems or less expensive healthcare systems. By the end of this show, you are going to find out that this entire system that we call healthcare in this country is a giant scam. It is a huge corporate-sponsored con designed to do just two things -- keep you in a state of disease and take all the money out of your pocket and out of your bank account.
When you die from the side effects of pharmaceuticals, go bankrupt, even owing money to the hospitals, then the shareholders of those corporations consider that a success. They made more money off you by exploiting your body than they would make if they showed you how to stay healthy. I know it is a serious topic but let us dig into it here. Let us not hold back. Let us tell the truth, which is something that I am pretty well-known for doing on the air, especially about healthcare issues.
Presidential candidates and the healthcare crisis
Let us start at the top. Today in this country we spend 84% of our dollars--government dollars -- on three things: war, disease, and debt. Of course, the government itself would call it defense, health and debt. It is actually war, disease, and debt and in this show, we are going to focus on the disease part of it. They say they are providing health care. I said they are providing only sickness care and they are avoiding teaching people how to stay healthy. It is a very peculiar reason for doing this. It is not that mysterious. It is a reason of profit.
Now we have presidential candidates who are telling you they are going to solve the healthcare problem. Hillary Clinton is famous for her healthcare platform; Barack Obama--we do not really know what his healthcare platform is, although he says he stands for certain types of reforms. Let us look at what these candidates would be inheriting if they were elected. Even if McCain were elected I think we would probably see just more collusion with Big Pharma because that would continue in the Republican line.
On the other hand, if Hillary Clinton were elected, her plan is to mandate that every person purchase health insurance. She would start fining citizens who could not afford insurance. I find that to be just bewildering. She would financially punish people. Make it a crime -- a fineable crime -- to not purchase health insurance. That is her plan for "mandatory coverage" or health insurance that covers everyone. When she says a national healthcare plan, she does not mean that the government is going to come along and offer a socialized medicine plan.
She means that it is a threat of a fine. Every citizen is going to be required to purchase health insurance whether they can afford it or not and whether they need it or not. For example, I do not carry health insurance at all. I only carry catastrophic injury type of insurance. For example, if I went skydiving or bungee jumping on the weekend and a piece of equipment did not work and I fell and broke a hip then I would be covered for that, but I do not have health insurance because I follow an extremely healthy lifestyle for one thing.
My chance of ever getting cancer is just about zero. My chance of getting diabetes is zero. My chances of getting heart disease are zero as well because of the extremely clean diet I have and intense nutritional supplementation. I get sunlight every day. I exercise and I do not have any toxic chemicals in my house. I do not use toxic shampoos or laundry detergent or cologne, which is made with toxic fragrance chemicals.
I do not eat sausage and processed meats that are made with sodium nitrite that causes cancer. I do not eat processed foods. I do not participate in that whole system of sickness and disease so I do not need health insurance. I have not been to a doctor in six years and I do not need to go. Under Hillary's healthcare plan people like me, and perhaps you, would have to buy health insurance and pay money to a corrupt system that is focused on keeping people diseased by giving them pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy and surgical procedures. We would be forced -- forced by our government to pay money to that system.
So much for healthcare freedom in America, huh? Now, here is the thing that all of these politicians have forgotten. You cannot fix the healthcare problem in this country by simply deciding who pays for sickness and disease. They are all playing a shell game folks. All they are doing is mixing up the shells and trying to hide the cost of a nation that is diseased. They are trying to shift the cost to some other party.
Some people want doctors to make less. Some people want health insurance companies to make less. Some people want government to pay more, or the taxpayers to pay more, or the customer to pay more right at the doctor's clinic, or the drug companies to make less. These are all shell games, folks. This entire conversation has no bearing on keeping people healthier. The way that you fix the healthcare problem in this country and the only way that you can fix it is to start teaching the population how to be healthy and how to prevent disease.
Disease is preventable
How much disease is actually preventable? Ninety-eight percent of all cancers are preventable by simple changes in diet, nutrition, and lifestyle. Almost 100% of Type II diabetes patients could have prevented that disease. Almost 100% -- we know the answers to this. We know exactly how to prevent and even how to reverse Type II diabetes.
Eighty percent of breast cancer can be prevented by one nutrient -- just one nutrient. It is the miracle nutrient and it is available free. What nutrient am I talking about? Vitamin D. Vitamin D prevents 80% of all cancers -- breast cancer, prostate cancer, leukemia, liver cancer, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer. Eighty percent is prevented by one nutrient. Then, add in other nutrients that prevent cancer like broccoli sprouts, Omega-3 fatty acids, seaweeds and sea vegetables and natural Vitamin C.
Plus medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Shitake, and all of the medicinal berries and different plants are out there provided by Mother Nature to prevent disease. If you add all of those in, you can prevent more than 90% of all cancers in this country. You can prevent at least 70% of all cases of Alzheimer's disease. You can prevent maybe 80% or more of all cases of osteoporosis and you can prevent nearly all cases of depression by changes in diet and lifestyle.
Changes that are, in fact, very simple. These are not complicated changes. This is not rocket science. The answers are right in front of us. We have the technology and we have the knowledge to prevent these diseases. So you might say, "well, why then? Why is it not being prevented?"
We are going to answer that question. We are going to talk about the scandal -- the healthcare scandal that is happening in this country and why no one is willing to talk about real solutions, and then we are going to talk about the solutions that we need -- that you need, that your family needs to avoid becoming diseased and bankrupt.
The sickness industry is bankrupting our nation
Think about this. One out of every five dollars spent in this country -- that is $1 out of $5 of GDP or Gross Domestic Product -- is spent on disease. They call it health care but I am calling it disease because most of it is just disease care.
Now think about that: 20% of our economy is spent on disease -- and is any of that money actually causing people to be free of those diseases? Are any patients having their cancers reversed by conventional medicine? No. Conventional medicine says they have not even found a cure. In fact, conventional medicine and pharmacology have not found a cure for anything.
They claim to be looking for the cure and they are holding all of these public events running around in circles, pink ribbons, yellow bracelets, or whatever, and they claim to be searching for a cure. They have been searching for a cure for cancer since the 1960s spending billions and billions of dollars and for some reason they still cannot come up with a cure.
You know why folks? Because they are not looking for a cure -- they are looking for the next blockbuster drug they can sell that manages the symptoms of cancer but also creates a cycle of dependence so that the cancer patient needs to keep buying their drugs over and over again. That is how you make money in this country. If you are a greedy corporation that has no ethics, you find a way to hook a patient or a customer on your products so that you can keep selling it to them repeatedly. The last thing you do if you want to make money is to show somebody how to cure a disease so they leave the hospital and never come back.
You do not make money showing people how to walk out of the hospital and be healthy and live a life free of pharmaceuticals and not needing medical care because they are so darn healthy. You do not make money by showing people how to take care of their health. That is the problem in this country, folks. We have a system of sickness care that is based on one thing -- profit. It is based on greed. It is based on shareholder value. And the shareholders in a pharmaceutical company do not make money when people get well and avoid the need for pharmaceuticals.
They only make money when people get sick and stay sick, and the longer they stay sick, the more money the shareholders make. Every decision made by that corporation is made in the interest of the shareholders. It is part of the rules of every corporation. Part of the Articles of Incorporation -- you have to make decisions to maximize the profits for that corporation. In fact, any corporate officer working for a drug company that made a decision harming the financial impact on the shareholders -- that is taking money away from them -- that officer would be fired, could actually be sued in fact.
Every corporation makes decisions that are in its own financial interest -- only financial interests, not social interests, not ethical interests and certainly no corporation runs around trying to compassionately help people get well. That is the image they try to portray on TV, that they are using all of this money that they are taking from people with these overpriced, monopoly-priced prescription drugs to search for tomorrow's cures.
That is what they say! Let me ask you this. If a drug company took all this money that people are raising and donating by holding marathons and holding all these fundraising events, if they took that money and invested it and found a cure for cancer, do you honestly think they would give that cure away for free? Are you kidding me?
If such a cure could ever be found, which by the way is bio-chemically impossible because cancer is not a virus or a bacteria, it is actually a systemic issue. If there could be a chemical found that would just cure cancer -- you take the chemical, it cures cancer do you think that company would give it away free? That would be the most profitable drug ever created in the history of our civilization. They would sell that drug at the highest price they could possible get for it.
They would sell that drug and they would make trillions of dollars in profits. And thus, their whole story of taking your money so they can search for the cure is really a clever way of using people's guilt to get the public to fund their own R&D (research and development) efforts. Then they can create drugs that will make them filthy rich. That is what it is all about. It is just a clever way to get the public to pay their R&D costs.
Now, if a drug company said, "Oh, we will take your money and we are going to search for a cure" and if they pledge, "If we find the cure we are going to give it away for free. We are going to give all our future drugs away for free. We are not going to seek patents on our drugs anymore" that would be different. They will not do that because they are in the sickness business. They depend on you being sick in order for them to make money. Where is all this heading then?
Well, if we are spending 84% of our dollars -- our federal spending dollars -- on more disease and debt, if one out of every five dollars is being spent in this economy on disease right now, and if that number is growing -- it is about to become 25% of GDP. One out of every four dollars being spent on disease -- what kind of a future does that paint for our country? Can a country survive and prosper if it is spending 25% of every dollar produced by its economy on sickness? No way� not a chance -- this country, folks, is not just going bankrupt, it is already bankrupt.
The healthcare costs are just driving it even deeper into debt. Think about this, the only thing that is keeping this country afloat fiscally is the fact that central banks of foreign countries like Japan and China are still willing to loan money to this government, a government that has no ability to pay back its loans, that has no willingness to pay back its loans. A country with a population that is more diseased than any population of any nation in the history of our world. How do these foreign banks think that they are going to be paid back from the U. S. government?
They are not going to be paid back. So here is how the bankruptcies are going to happen. There are going to be a series of rolling bankruptcies. You are going to have personal bankruptcies, households, and families. You are going to have municipal bankruptcies -- cities and states. And you are going to have a federal bankruptcy. When all of this ripples through, we are going to wind up broke and diseased dying from perfectly preventable conditions. If we only had the sense to wake up and start preventing disease in this country.
Now, I know that is a dark picture and I want to offer you some hope for a way to turn this around and solve this problem. When we come back from the next break, we are going to start talking about solutions. What can we do right now to turn this country around and save ourselves from the financial bankruptcy that will follow if we do not start controlling our healthcare costs?
Real solutions to save our economy
In this segment -- what we can do to solve this problem and stave off this financial doom that seems to be approaching if we do not make some serious changes? I mean we have households going broke, 50% of all personal bankruptcies now are caused by medical costs.
We have states going broke because they cannot cover the pensions and the healthcare benefits that they promised to their retirees. We have corporations going broke. Did you know General Motors spends more on healthcare than it does on steel? Really! These healthcare costs are driving corporations off our shores. They are forcing them to go overseas just to stay in business and stay competitive.
Then we have a federal government that under the Bush Administration made such a lousy deal with the pharmaceutical companies that it actually made it illegal for the government to negotiate volume pricing with drug companies. How insane is that? Only under a system of greed and collusion and corruption could such an agreement ever have been reached between the federal government and the drug companies.
As you have learned -- if you have been listening to this show for very long or listening to the Alex Jones Show, or Jeff Rents which I recommend -- corporations run this government. Corporations run this country so it is really no surprise the government would act in the interests of corporations. However, I promised to talk about solutions.
There are solutions available. They are radical because we need some radical changes if we are going to make a difference and turn this thing around -- because things are so messed up. We need to take the profit out of disease. How are we going to do that? Here are my suggestions. Now, I am making these in all seriousness but I do not expect they will ever be adopted because they are not in the interest of the corporations and the power people that run this country.
These suggestions go against the status quo. They empower the people, not the corporations. They are suggestions that make common sense but they might not make corporate fiscal sense. They are suggestions that decentralize power. Take it out of Washington, D.C. and put it back into the hands of the people who live in this country and the doctors who practice medicine locally. It puts the power back into the hands of the citizens where it belongs.
That is where power is supposed to be in this country. That is what our founding fathers said and understood and tried to dictate in the Constitution. That is what they tried to do to create a system where the people are in power. Now the government and the corporations and the media have taken most of that power and they have left us in a state of chronic disease and bankruptcy. That is where they left us.
End all patents on medicine
What are the solutions? Number one is ending all patents on medicine. That is right. Take away the intellectual property from medicines. Why should medicines that are supposedly created for the benefit of humankind be made to benefit just one investor or one corporation?
In fact, I am for ending intellectual property laws on medicines, genes, and seeds. I think it is wrong. I think it is evil for corporations to claim patent ownership over the human genome. Did you know that 20% of the genes in your cells right now are "owned by corporations?" That is true. The U.S. Patent Office has granted patents on your genes, which means technically if you have a child and reproduce those genes you are in violation of U.S. patent law and some day they could potentially start charging you a royalty if you happen to replicate the genes that they have patented. They could send you a bill. That sounds crazy. I know it sounds completely insane but so does the idea of patenting genes in the first place. Why were they given those patents?
This is a real issue. We have to end the patents and that way we take the financial incentive out of the pharmaceutical industry to just keep creating fictitious diseases. Now I hear what you are saying. Skeptics listening to this are saying, "Well, what is going to be the incentive for them to create new medicines that we really need?" Well, first, 80% of the medicines that are created today are just drugs that are no better than the older drugs that went off patent. No better at all.
In fact, many of them are more dangerous. But the drug companies cannot make money off the old drugs that went off patent so they try to discredit the old drugs and they hype up the new drugs. They hire their drug reps to go into doctors' offices and convince them to prescribe the "new" drug.
It may be the same antihistamine, it may be the same blood thinner, it may be the same statin drug just with a slightly different molecule, a slightly different health claim, a slightly different package and a new fancy sounding name and a big television advertising campaign. The truth is folks, 80% of the drugs that Big Pharma releases and promotes each year and that doctors prescribe, offer zero benefits over the older drugs that went off patent.
Most of the pharmaceutical promotion is just nonsense. Secondly, when people ask me, "well, if drugs could not be patented who would have the incentive to come up with drugs?" That is the assumption that there is no other organization that would have any interest in keeping people healthy with certain drugs that might be necessary. For example, universities could come up with drugs or governments could come up with certain drugs that might be needed like certain targeted antibiotics and so on.
You do not have to have a profit incentive to create things. For example, the U.S. government put a man on the moon in 1969. They did not make any money doing it. They did it because it was important for them. Of course, it was important because of military technology. I think a government with the right leaders could have the foresight to invest some R&D in medical technology and not have to have corporations making billions of dollars off it. The problem is when you put the corporations in charge then they have incentives to make people sick.
They have incentives to invent fictitious diseases like ADHD, which is a completely bogus, fictitious condition. It does not exist. There is no test whatsoever. You cannot see it under a microscope. You cannot see it on the MRI. There is no blood test. It is a completely fictitious condition but it sells a lot of drugs. You take away that profit incentive and then you can get back to a more common sense healthcare system that is focused on keeping people healthy rather than running TV ads that convince everyone they are diseased.
Ban all drug advertising
You see, the system we have today is based on just how much money you can make by convincing people that they are diseased. The second thing we need to do is ban all drug advertising. In fact, it was banned before 1997 except in medical journals but you could not just advertise pharmaceuticals to the public on television.
It makes no sense because the public are not doctors. They cannot make decisions about what pharmaceuticals they need. So why advertise to the public? Well, the FDA allowed it. They legalized it in 1997 and 1998. Since then drug profits have skyrocketed because now the drug companies can use the power of television advertising and magazine ads and even radio ads to brainwash the public into thinking they are sick, into thinking they are depressed, into thinking that a cholesterol number is now a disease or that pre-diabetes has to be treated with drugs.
People need to come in and be screened for breast cancer so they can be treated with cancer drugs regardless of whether the breast cancer screening process is accurate. Because the truth is, 10 women are harmed by mammography for every one woman that is helped by it. I have an article citing the study on www.NaturalNews.com. Check that out if you question that claim. It is true!
Today sickness is a business. If we take the profit out of it then we can get back to a healthcare system based on keeping people healthy so that people can contribute to a better economy. So that people can stay alive longer, share their ideas more, and be more creative, more productive, and more functional. That is how we create abundance in this country by keeping people healthy -- not by keeping people sick and then taking profits out of our shares in the pharmaceutical companies. That is a ridiculous concept. We do not create abundance by making money off sick people.
We create abundance by teaching people how to be well, how to have healthy children, how to have a healthy future.
We have also discussed solutions for how to end the spiraling healthcare costs in this country. We do not do it by just simply requiring everybody to buy insurance. We do it by getting back to the basics of health and showing people how to prevent disease and how to stay healthy. We also talked about the fact that most diseases -- cancer, heart disease, diabetes, depression, you name it -- almost all of them are preventable at levels of 80%, 90% and 99% in some cases. All preventable but how do we do that?
Another suggestion that we talked about in the last segment was ending pharmaceutical advertising because the advertising serves absolutely no public education purpose whatsoever. It is a joke. It is not justifiable by any sensible person. Why should drug companies be allowed to advertise to the public? It is illegal in every other country in the world. Only in America is it allowed.
Ban junk food marketing
The next thing we should do is ban junk food marketing. Junk food companies, which include fast food joints, soda companies and snack chip companies and all the companies making products that promote diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer -- those companies should not be allowed to advertise their products. That would be a big change, would it not?
Probably much of the TV would just be silence because most of what you see on TV today is just junk. It is pharmaceutical ads and junk food ads and soda ads -- all the stuff that makes you sick and broke. That is what the media loves because these companies have lots of extra money to invest in advertising. That is why the media -- the mainstream media -- is so biased against natural medicine. They love soft drink companies.
Oh yes, they love snack companies. They love beer companies. They love drug companies because their products make so much money that they can spend a lot of it on more advertising. TV companies and cable news stations -- they love that. They get more money from it. I say we have to ban that marketing because, why should a company be allowed to promote products to children in particular, when we know they will harm those children? We know that soft drinks, for example, are made with high fructose corn syrup -- an ingredient that directly promotes diabetes and obesity.
It also contains phosphoric acid, which is of course, a highly acidic chemical that eats away bones. It destroys healthy teeth. It causes osteoporosis in young people -- even men in their 20s for example, are now suffering from osteoporosis. It causes kidney stones and gout. Why should a soda company be allowed to advertise this dangerous beverage to children?
We have children now who are obese and they are only seven years old. We have children so young now getting diabetes that they had to change the name of the disease. It used to be called adult-onset diabetes. They had to remove the words, "adult-onset" and just call it Type II diabetes because it is striking so many children now that the word "adult" seems somewhat ridiculous. Children are getting an adult's disease.
Children are now being diagnosed with heart disease and cancer at levels that we have never seen before and children are being diagnosed with depression and then they are being put on anti-depressant drugs, which of course, makes them crazy, makes them violent, makes them walk into their schools with automatic weapons and blow away their classmates. This is medicine. Are you kidding me?
This is not medicine. This system does not have the welfare of the public in mind but this system only exploits the public. I say we end it by banning the advertising of junk foods to children especially. I think we should ban them outright altogether. So far then, the suggestions are: end patent protection on pharmaceuticals, end the advertising of pharmaceuticals and end the advertising of junk foods. What is the next thing we should do? We should end government subsidies on those junk foods.
End government subsidies junk foods
Why should we use taxpayer dollars? You may not have even been aware of this by the way. Taxpayer dollars are being used to provide extra money to the sugar industry and the corn industry. What do you see when you walk into a grocery store as the most unhealthy processed foods -- corn products and sugar products. Think about it.
Whatever you subsidize, you encourage the public to consume and eat because, of course, people are on a budget. They want to buy food at the lowest price they can. The poor people in this country are now buying more sugar and more corn. What does sugar and corn do? Well, sugar causes diabetes, obesity, and nutritional deficiencies that lead to depression and other problems. What does corn do? Well, how do you fatten up a cow? Have you ever heard the term corn-fed beef? You fatten up a cow by feeding it corn.
How do you fatten up the American population? You do it by feeding it corn. There is corn in everything. There is corn in cereal. There is corn in tortillas. There is corn in chips. It is almost impossible to get away from corn. And then, of course, there is the high fructose corn syrup, which is an unnatural isolated substance extracted from corn that promotes even more diabetes and/or obesity. Then we have the government subsidizing these two industries.
This means, of course, the government is trying to motivate people to buy more products that are bad for their health. I mean you could make a strong argument for a conspiracy behind this. I am not going to go there because I would rather talk about my suggestion, which is why do we not start subsidizing products that are healthy for people? The government should start subsidizing organic produce that would make organic apples, celery, and broccoli less expensive than sugar and corn.
Gee, a whole lot of families in this country would start buying more organic produce would they not? Then they would have better nutrition because there is more nutrition in organic produce than in conventional produce and people would have fewer diseases. Then healthcare costs would go down. Kind of an interesting cause and effect, is it not? Too bad no one in the government is interested in actually doing what is right for our country it seems -- only what is right for private industry.
The sugar industry -- why do we need to subsidize sugar? This industry is very wealthy. It has a monopoly control over the sugar industry -- over all sugar. Even imported sugar is taxed to protect the monopoly here in the United States. We have sugar in everything. There is sugar in salad dressing. There is sugar in pizza sauce. There is sugar in cornbread. Cornbread is really corn cake. It is corn and sugar mostly, the two things that we are talking about that we do not need more of. Why are we subsidizing corn? Why are we subsidizing sugar? We have to stop that and we have to start subsidizing the things that are healthy for people.
Provide nutritional supplementation for all women of childbearing age
The next thing we need to do is we need to provide at taxpayer expense -- which means the government pays for it -- nutritional supplementation for all women of childbearing age. All expectant mothers should be given free nutritional supplements to prevent birth defects and give their newborn children the health that they need to avoid medical costs, to enhance brain function. I mean we could save billions of dollars a year. We could save literally billions of dollars a year if we just gave a couple of dollars worth of nutritional supplements to expectant mothers.
The cost of giving birth to a deformed baby is in the millions of dollars. And over the lifetime of that baby, it can be tens of millions of dollars. It is a huge cost to society but it costs almost nothing to prevent birth defects, almost nothing -- just a few pennies a day for just zinc. Zinc alone prevents 70% of low birth-weight babies from being low weight. If you wanted to make an investment in something in this country, this is the best investment you could possibly make. Nutrition for expectant mothers: make it free.
Ban dangerous ingredients in the food supply
We should also be running public service ads about nutrition. We should be banning dangerous ingredients in the food supply instead of just regulating them. We should ban them. We should ban, for example, high fructose corn syrup, I think. We should ban partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. We should ban sodium nitrite, which causes cancer and it is found in all processed meats.
We should ban artificial food colors that cause ADHD and we should ban various chemicals in foods that are promoting cancer and diabetes and heart disease right now. These are just some of the many suggestions that we could use to solve this problem. We will continue with this topic on a future show because there is a lot more to talk about here. There are many more solutions.
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