TEXAS HOUSE ADJOURNS WITHOUT A VOTE ON DIETITIAN MONOPOLY
June 5, 2009 – Texas dietitians have been at least stalled in their effort to pass HB 3528 which would have given them a monopoly on giving nutrition advice . Surely your calls, letters and emails slowed the process. When the legislature adjourned, the bill was left pending in a House committee. The legislature is not due back in session until 2011, but there may be a special session sooner. I don't know if protocol would allow this issue to be activated, but based on a long track record of such attempts, you can be sure it will be back as soon as possible.
SWINE FLU ADVICE
April 30, 2009 – Better u nderstand the facts behind the panic. Learn about safe natural remedies and way to improve immune function. Click here to read my special report.
DIET PRODUCT RECALL
April 20, 2009 – 34 weight loss products have been recalled because they contain a drug, Sibutramine. The FDA says the drug can increase blood pressure and/or pulse rate . A list of products being recalled.
Fabulous Senate Hearing: Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation
Follow this link to view a hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The Feb 26 panel featured preventive medicine rock stars: Dr. Andrew Weil (pictured here), Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Mark Hyman. They told the senators the truth and outline impressive ideas for meaningful improvement. Surprise - they were more than warmly received. Alison Levy (in an article on the Huffington Post 3/1/2009) states it well: “Not every health problem is an emergency. Unless you wait around and do nothing until it becomes one. And that's what we've done ---as individuals and as a nation, now in the throes of a health care system in crisis with ballooning waistlines and ballooning costs.” Exciting possibilities! Please let your legislators know what you think.
Please read this article and then my comment at the end. I give you an easy way to contact your legislator:
“Ruin Your Health with the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey
Commentary by Betsy McCaughey
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama 's stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.
Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle , until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH , pdf version).
The bill's health rules will affect “every individual in the United States ” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.
But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor's decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “ Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis .” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.
New Penalties
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn't defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)
What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won't make.
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle's book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).
The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle's book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.
In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.
Hidden Provisions
If the Obama administration's economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.
The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).
Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration's health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”
More Scrutiny Needed
On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.
The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.
( Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Martie's Comments (continued): Along with a dose of socialized medicine these provisions do include the usual tired ideas about cost. They put pressure on prices and that has a chilling effect on recruitment of the best talent. And they talk about cost shifting but no one is fooled—the public pays the tab directly or indirectly. We need real reform and this is headed 180 degrees the wrong way!
Medicine's own studies clearly document that the current mainstream practice of medicine, with its utter dependence on drugs and invasive techniques, kills more citizens every year than cancer or heart disease. Sure, we need to stem the escalating cost burden but we also need to protect the citizen's right to choose and actually improve their health outcomes, not just trade one problem for another.
America's only hope for achieving that goal lies with those innovative doctors and professionals who find the root causes of disease and then fix them. They cannot do that following medical dogma lockstep. These brave pioneers use non-invasive, non-toxic natural techniques and often nutrition supplements. That brings me to just one example of the potential harm of the bill. The pharmaceutical companies obviously hate the idea of natural remedies and under the guise of “standardizing” will certainly apply pressure to restrict the availability of supplements. Using their not so subtle influence in Congress and with the FDA, they have attempted it before and have sometimes succeeded.
These changes would have broad, deep and lasting effects and certainly unintended consequences. They deserve a vigorous debate not slight of hand.
On the home page we have a featured category called Hot Topics with Martie . When a new subject is introduced there, the one that has been replaced will move to this page for awhile so you can more easily catch up on the recently past issues. (Next those write-ups will be archived in the appropriate category on the Free Articles page.)
Health Freedom
Understand the current issues make your voice heard. It isn't that hard, but it is very important. Follow this link
BERKEY WATER SYSTEMS
Water filters discussed by Dr. Lucille
on the Healthy By Nature Show
Do Vaccinations Cause Autism?
It depends on who you ask. You hear only good news about alleged disease prevention from the medical establishment, the makers of the vaccines, the regulators who are so closely associated with them and the media that is apparently lax in investigating both sides. You hear cautions, dire warnings and even horror stories from the doctors of integrative medicine, nutritionists, activist groups and parents. A recent court decision declined to hold the vaccine makers liable. My personal opinion is that vaccines cause their trouble in subgroups that have other genetic or environmental factors at work.
But just what can you say to a parent whose child was perfectly normal before injections and promptly became autistic afterward? Official platitudes are little comfort. In 1978, 1 child in 10,000 was diagnosed with autism. Now the frequency is perhaps as high as 1 in 150. Something is sure going on. Doesn't it seem a little reckless that we went from children having maybe fewer than 6 vaccinations before they entered school to perhaps having that many before they leave the hospital and dozens before they enter school?
According to several experts there are major concerns with vaccinations. Just for example:
• Most of the immunizations contain mercury which is likely the most neuro-toxic non-radioactive element known to man. (Mercury is ostensibly included as a preservative but also acts to make the vaccine have more effect.)
• Both the injected material and the mercury have a strong effect on microglia, tiny immune cells in the brain. Over-activation of these cells damages the brain. There seems to be a cumulative effect from multiple immunizations and the closer they are together, the greater the concern.
• People have different levels of tolerance to the shots. For example, one may have genetic variances or have had other exposures that compound the effect of the vaccine on the brain cells.
• Vaccines may routinely be contaminated with substances and organisms that should not be injected.
• Some people actually get the disease in the vaccine which was supposedly inactivated.
Two interesting interviews we've had on the subject:
