The Political Takeover of American Medicine Is Almost Complete

The Political Takeover of American Medicine Is Almost Complete

© By Peter Barry Chowka

Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902)

(April 15, 2008) One hundred and fifty years after the door was first opened a half a world away, politics is now poised to finally and completely take over and consume the practice of medicine in the United States. The ramifications for personal freedom, privacy, and choice, particularly for anyone interested in employing medical alternatives, are profound, even if they are little recognized in the CAM (complementary alternative medicine) community.

The year 1848 is often cited by statists as the dawn of social, or political, medicine. In that year, German physician Rudolf Virchow, noted for his contributions to cellular pathology and widely considered to be the father of social medicine, was particularly active. According to a 2005 article in the far left wing (one might even say communist) publication Monthly Review, which lionizes not only Virchow but Cuban communist revolutionary Che Guevara (another medical doctor), Virchow

stood on the barricades during the March 1848 Berlin uprisings and later played an active political role, serving as Berlin city counselor, a founder of the German Progressive Radical Party, and a member of the Prussian and German parliaments. During the revolutionary days of 1848 his journal proclaimed that “Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a grand scale.”

From the barricades to the Oval Office

In this U.S. election year of 2008, medicine and politics have now come together to offer us a modern version of Virchow's vision of “politics [as] nothing but medicine on a grand scale.” The vehicle or means to this end is the greatest potential expansion of government power and authority in modern times: “universal health care.” Distinguishing the political from the medical at the level of clinical practice in the United States under a government-run universal health care system will soon be impossible.

Mark Steyn's comments from a June 2007 article about socialized medicine – the kind of medical system that may soon be operant here – represent one of the best summaries:

Socialized health care is the single biggest factor in transforming the relationship of the individual to the state. In fact, once it's introduced it becomes very hard to have genuinely conservative government-certainly, not genuinely small government. . . In Continental cabinets (and in Canada) the Defense ministry is somewhere you pass through en route to a really important portfolio like Health. Election campaigns become devoted to competing pledges about 'fixing' health care, even though by definition it never can be.

It is not an exaggeration to say that every day of the week, almost without exception, there are mounting calls for universal health care in the United States coming from politicians, public policy wonks, special interest groups, the media, columnists, academics, and even many physicians and medical professionals. The counter arguments on behalf of freedom, autonomy, and less government involvement are comparatively few in number and are routinely drowned out by the dominant, more politically correct noise.

Both of the remaining Democrat candidates for President, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), have promised to enact universal health care if elected. Both routinely stretch, or even ignore, the truth in making their arguments on behalf of government-run medicine.

In a recent, particularly glaring, example of a blatant falsehood, the New York Times on April 5, 2008 exposed the fact that a story Sen. Clinton was telling repeatedly on the campaign trial was simply not true.

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee. The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured. “We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

Clinton eventually stopped using the story.

Will prevention “make health care more affordable?”

For his part, Sen. Obama keeps insisting, according to the Washington Post (April 8, 2008) and numerous other sources, that American health care “can be made more affordable” – American families can each save up to $2,500 a year – under his proposed government-run health care plan if five cost-containing strategies are implemented, one of which is “improving prevention and management of chronic conditions.”

The reality, however, is that investing in prevention does not necessarily save money. According to the aforementioned April 8, 2008 Post article, “In 1986, a health economist named Louise B. Russell published 'Is Prevention Better Than Cure?,' in which she concluded that prevention activities tend to cost more than they save. Since the book's appearance, her observation has been borne out by studies of hundreds of interventions -- everything from offering mammograms to all women and prescribing drugs to people with high cholesterol to requiring passenger-side air bags in cars and shortening the response time of ambulances.”

Essentially confirming this analysis, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article on February 14, 2008, “Does Preventive Care Save Money? Health Economics and the Presidential Candidates.” Despite the journal's consistent editorial support for universal health care, the authors came to some sobering conclusions about the political rhetoric swirling around the campaigns for president and other elected offices in 2008.

After reviewing 599 published studies, the authors write:

Sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching. Studies have concluded that preventing illness can in some cases save money but in other cases can add to health care costs. . . The focus on prevention as a key source of cost savings in health care also sidesteps the question of whether such measures are generally more promising and efficient than the treatment of existing conditions. Researchers have found that although high-technology treatments for existing conditions can be expensive, such measures may, in certain circumstances, also represent an efficient use of resources.

Echoing this concern, in the UK, which is far ahead of the U.S. in terms of experience with government-run health care, the British Medical Association (BMA) recently warned that “screening well people could make it more difficult for sick patients to get a GP practice appointment.” The warning was in response to the British government's announcement that everyone between the ages of 40 and 74 will now be entitled to vascular screening. In a BMA news release on April 1, 2008, Dr. Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GP Committee, “question[ed] the lack of scientific evidence behind the government screening plans.”

More medicine = better health: Where's the evidence?

I believe that a multiplicity of hospitals is no test of civilization. It is rather a symptom of decay.

– Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi's Health Guide, page 7

In addition to proposing that unproven concepts like prevention, electronic medical records, and evidence based medicine will save money and result in positive health impacts in the U.S., proponents of universal health care also insist that the wider, even “universal,” availability of orthodox or allopathic medicine on demand itself will result in improved health outcomes. Yet, evidence of the true track record of orthodox medical care is mixed, at best.

A leading report in this area, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, was published in 2000. An excerpt from the Executive Summary on page one of this 287 page report is telling:

At least 44,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors. . . the number may be as high as 98,000. Even when using the lower estimate, deaths due to medical errors exceed the number attributable to the 8th-leading cause of death. More people die in a given year as a result of medical errors than from motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297), or AIDS (16,516).

Some recent example of the same phenomenon – which I have long called the failure of orthodox medicine: In the UK, which has had government-run health care via the National Health Service (NHS) since 1948 (the UK is often cited as a model for the U.S. by proponents of American universal health care schemes), the Guardian newspaper reported on April 3, 2008 that “Adverse drug reactions cost NHS £2bn.” According to the story,

The NHS is spending nearly £2bn a year treating patients who have had an adverse reaction to drugs prescribed for them by doctors, according to new figures from the centre-left think tank Compass. The amount of money spent on hospital care for those given the wrong medicine or who have reacted badly to a drug could pay for 10,000 new midwives or easily cover the estimated cost of combating MRSA infections, says Compass. The health minister Dawn Primarolo confirmed to the organisation that 6.5% of hospital admissions are a result of an adverse reaction. Total admissions in 2006 were 16 million, which means that 1,040,000 patients were there as a result of the drugs they were prescribed.

The Independent, another UK newspaper, reported on April 9, 2008 that

Exaggerated claims are being made for new cancer treatments that are not justified by the evidence, scientists warned yesterday. Drugs hailed as breakthrough treatments for cancer, Britain's biggest cause of death, may be less effective and cause more harm than suspected, they said. A sharp increase in the number of trials being halted prematurely to deliver rapid results is undermining confidence in the drugs.

Meanwhile, in the area of HIV-AIDS research, there has been scant attention in the U.S. to recent reports of a major, mind boggling “crisis” in the field. But as yet another British newspaper, the Daily Mail, headlined it on April 9, 2008, “AIDS research in crisis as 'miracle' vaccines actually INCREASE chance of catching virus.”

The search for a cure for Aids was in crisis last night after it was revealed that two supposed “miracle” vaccines not only fail to protect people from the virus, but could put them at greater risk of becoming infected. It is a massive blow to Aids research, which has ground to a halt - with seven other trials of similarly designed would-be vaccines either suspended or called off indefinitely. The US government alone pumps £250million a year into research to try to find a “Holy Grail” vaccine which would put an end to Aids. Now scientists fear the disastrous outcome of the two most promising trials leaves them back at square one.

It should be kept in mind that HIV-AIDS research in the United States has received more government funding than any other single disease – a curious focus in light of the fact that in recent times, according to the Centers for Disease Control, about 15,000 Americans a year have died from HIV-AIDS as opposed to 700,000 from heart disease and 600,000 from cancer – diseases which receive far less funding overall than HIV-AIDS despite the fact that together they result in almost one hundred times as many deaths annually as AIDS!

The reason for these skewed medical research priorities lies in politics. Special interest groups representing politically powerful minority constituencies that claim to be at higher risk of contracting HIV-AIDS (not, it should be noted, without the support of the pharmaceutical industry), have strong-armed politicians to appropriate unprecedented and largely unaccountable sums of money to the hyper politically correct HIV-AIDS Establishment for developing HIV tests, drugs, and vaccines. Meanwhile, candidates for the presidency including Sen. Obama are promising to double research funding for more of the same at the U.S. National Institutes of Health including specifically appropriating more money for HIV-AIDS. As one account noted, “Obama will expand funding for [HIV-AIDS] research, especially for. . . a vaccine.”

Both Democrat candidates have also vigorously endorsed parity for mental health screening and treatments (translation: drugs) under any emerging government health care plans. Already in the U.S., according to the Guardian (April 7, 2008), 2.5 million children are on antipsychotic drugs, and “even children barely out of babyhood are getting a diagnosis of bipolar disorder” and being prescribed drugs. A recent PBS Frontline program, “The Medicated Child,” put the number of American children on prescribed drugs at six million.

There is also a frenzy to increase the number of vaccinations and to aim for near total compliance – no more opting out. “Mandates,” a word heard more and more often in relation to conventional health insurance and compliance with government health care plans, is being applied to immunizations, as well. As the Washington Post reported on November 14, 2007, “The parents of more than 2,300 Prince George's County [Maryland] students who failed to get needed vaccinations could face fines of $50 a day and up to 10 days in jail if their children do not meet the state's immunization requirements, county officials said yesterday.”

These examples are emblematic of the status quo and are predictive of what's ahead with greater enforcement powers if and when the government takes complete control of American medicine.

And wherefore alternative medicine?

The role, if any, for alternative medicine in this looming centralized and hyper bureaucratized politically driven matrix – like for therapeutic choice, autonomy, and other freedoms – is in serious doubt. In the UK, which again can be seen as a harbinger for things to come here, alternative medicine, or CAM, despite continuing popular interest and support, including on the part of the highly visible and influential heir to the throne, HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, is very much on the defensive.

The fact is that when money (appropriated to fund centralized government health care schemes) becomes tight as it inevitably does when shifting medical care to government control results in exploding inflation and overall costs, the government bean counters begin to target things they consider inessential, “unproven,” or lacking in “evidence” – like most CAM therapies. The opponents of alt med and CAM in the medical-industrial complex, who have never accepted non-allopathic healing approaches to begin with, are natural allies with the bureaucrats and assorted mainstream experts in this emerging anti-alt med jihad.

Edzard Ernst, M.D., Ph.D

The anti-alt med and anti-CAM mindset is even spreading to erstwhile CAM proponents! On April 8, 2008, the leading self-appointed CAM expert in the UK, Edzard Ernst, M.D., Ph.D., who is influential on both sides of the Atlantic (according to the Guardian, “Ernst has 700 papers published in reputable scientific journals now and a worldwide reputation”), co-authored an inflammatory article in one of Britain's largest newspapers, the Daily Mail, titled “Are we being hoodwinked by alternative medicine? Two leading scientists examine the evidence.” Ernst's and his co-author's answer to their question was an unqualified “Yes.” They even challenged the efficacy of chiropractic, the most widespread alternative therapy: “DOES IT WORK? There is no evidence to suggest that spinal manipulation is effective for anything but back pain and even then conventional approaches (such as regular exercise and ibuprofen) are just as likely to be effective and are cheaper.”

Jane Brody

In the United States, mainstream pressure against alt med and CAM is also building in the run up to the imposition of universal health care, helping to soften up the political landscape for a crackdown on or a serious diminution of alt med in any future government-run health care plan. In a widely cited piece in the New York Times on April 8, 2008, Jane Brody described the “Potential for Harm in Dietary Supplements.” Writing in the purported “newspaper of record,” Brody did not mince words:

A form of substance abuse rampant in this country is rarely discussed publicly or privately. It involves abusing legally sold dietary supplements — vitamins, minerals, herbals and homeopathic remedies — all of which can be sold over the counter without prior approval for safety and effectiveness. . .

A National Institutes of Health panel in May 2006 noted: “The F.D.A. has insufficient resources and legislative authority to require specific safety data from dietary supplement manufacturers or distributors before or after their products are made available to the public. The constraints imposed on F.D.A. make it difficult for the health of the American public to be adequately protected.”

Caveat emptor.

 

Peter Barry Chowka is a widely published writer and investigative journalist who writes about politics, health care, and the media. Between 1992 and 1994, he was an advisor to the National Institutes of Health. His Web site is: http://chowka.com

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