Let’s Get Fiscal About the Cost of Health Care
Burton Goldberg
Alternative Medicine Digest (AlternativeMedicine.com)
The bottom line on the conventional medicine venture is bankruptcy. If I were Uncle
Sam, I’d be tearing my hair out over this incredible failure of American medicine
to be cost efficient and I would be cancelling the unlimited expense budget of organized
medicine today. There are effective alternatives. Get results, or get out!
As a lifelong businessman, when I think about that $1 trillion, I have to ask: “are
we getting our money’s worth? Does all this make fiscal sense?” The sad fact is
that it doesn’t make sense at all. This isn’t health care-it’s sickness care. Conventional
medicine keeps coming up with new drugs and high tech procedures, yet none of this
heals or cures disease. At best, it deals with symptoms, and, too often, it either
suppresses symptoms or makes a person unwell from the “side-effects.”
Take cancer research. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) spends about $2 billion
of American taxpayer’s money every year to look for “cures,” as long as they don’t
come from alternative medicine, even though all the breakthrough discoveries in healing
chronic diseases are coming from this source. Think about it: The NCI has a $2 billion
a year expense account; but, after 40 years, mainstream cancer researchers are no
closer to a cancer cure than NASA is to colonizing the Moon. Or take what we spend
our research dollars on. Out of $12 billion allocated every year by Congress to the
National Institutes of Health, only spare change-about $5.4 million-goes to the Office
of Alternative Medicine to look into the claims of some 50 therapies. Meanwhile,
almost everybody knows by now that about one-third of Americans visit an alternative
physician at least once a year and spend nearly $12 billion of their own money, not
insurance company reimbursements, doing it.
As a businessman, I want to see the bottom line before I spend more money on a venture.
The bottom line on the conventional medicine venture is bankruptcy. If I were Uncle
Sam, I’d be tearing my hair out over this incredible failure of American medicine
to be cost efficient and I would be cancelling the unlimited expense budget of organized
medicine today. There are effective alternatives. Get results, or get out! It’s about
time we ran our national health care as a real business. And how about the insurance
companies? By and large, it’s the insurance companies that shell out most of the
$1 trillion dollars. Surely, if they sat down and studied the statistics, the outcome
costs, the side-effects cost, the iatrogenic costs (the cost of patients being injured
by the medical treatment or hospital itself), they would scratch their heads and
ask if there weren’t a less expensive way to go. How much of conventional medicine
do you suppose would still have a financial leg to stand on after this kind of rigorous
financial review?
Insurance companies will find that cost-effective way if they look at the costs and
outcomes from alternative medicine. They could actually make more money by backing
alternative medicine than by putting all their chips behind the high tech gamblers
of conventional medicine. Why gamble with the unproven and toxic when you can depend
on the affordable alternative? Showing people the value of alternatives, as you
know, is what my work as publisher of AlternativeMedicine.com is all about. I know
I’m not alone in experiencing this daily outrage at the cost of medical care in America.
Saving money on medical costs is on the minds of many Americans and, for that goal,
prevention is the way to go. Research shows that an ounce of prevention is worth
a pound of cure. For every $1 we spend on prevention today, we’ll save $30 on treatment
tomorrow. Heart disease, for example, is one of the most preventable chronic degenerative
diseases, yet we’re still spending $9 billion for 300,000 coronary artery bypass
graft surgeries every year.
In a previous issue (Digest No. 6), one of our physicians explained that chelation
therapy, if used as a preventive measure for heart disease, could save us an estimated
$8 billion a year in health care costs. Is anybody taking this advice? No. Instead,
the California medical authorities are doing their best to get chelation therapy
outlawed and to arrest and harass respectable M.D.s merely for practicing chelation.
Also, in the last Digest you read the amazing story of Cheryl Wilkens who used the
metabolic nutritional program of Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., to successfully treat
her metastasized lymph cancer at a cost of about $4000. She is cancer-free today-for
$4000. In this Digest, you’ll read the equally amazing-and almost tragic-case of
Debi Erin, R.N. For 10 years, she was the victim of a mental health establishment
that still doesn’t have a clue how to treat schizophrenia. When Erin finally found
her “clue,” it was from a doctor of alternative medicine who prescribed a $20 bottle
of essential fatty acids and she was cured. Today, Erin is schizophrenia-free, for
pennies. In this issue, you’ll also read about Mary, a woman who eliminated 8 years
of back pain, intestinal discomfort, headaches, and hypoglycemia, with $700 worth
of chiropractic treatment.
Also, in this Digest you’ll read about Jay Holder who is both an M.D. and chiropractor.
Dr. Holder’s bold new approach to treating addictions is to use chiropractic and
amino acids. At a cost of about $870 per client per year, Holder’s chiropractic approach
is getting astonishingly high recovery rates-100% of addicted patients receiving
chiropractic finish their 30-day treatment program. This is a key indicator of whether
they’ll stay drug-free in the future. Who can argue that this is money well spent-and
it’s not that much money in the first place! The field of alternative medicine is
full of stories like these, of patients who suffered the unnecessary pain and extravagant
expense of conventional medicine only to find a lower-cost, safer, and more effective
treatment from alternative medicine. Don’t you think this is where we should be spending
our tax dollars, investigating and supporting these life-saving alternatives?
A new poll of San Francisco Bay area residents showed that 41% consulted an alternative
medicine doctor last year and that 80% said they’d do it again. What’s the solution?
Let’s get fiscal about the cost of health care and support all the safer, cheaper,
more effective alternatives and pocket the difference. As Dr. Guylaine Lanct, M.D.,
says in The Medical Mafia (reviewed in this issue), the patients-that great, powerful,
but too silent majority of about 256 million Americans-hold the purse-strings on
the $1 trillion health care budget. “The only one who has the ultimate power to change
the system is the patient,” says Dr. Lanct?? One practical way to exercise your patient-power
is to keep informed of legislative events and to urge your elected officials to allow
alternative doctors to practice openly, without harassment. Meanwhile, the Digest
will keep you up-to-date on everything you need to know about the most cost-effective
alternatives in medicine. That way we can all show some fiscal care for our health.
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