Here is my reaction to the health/disease care “reform.”
This "health" care "reform" legislation is about disease and injury care, not real health care in relation to disease prevention and health maintenance for most people. Since this legislation is about disease and injury care, it will be a boon to the drug companies and the insurance companies. This amounts to big political payoffs to these huge corporate entities just as the billion dollar + purchase of dangerous H1N1 vaccines last year was a political payoff with serious risks to the public’s health.
Unless there is a major paradigm shift from toxic drugs and vaccines to strong nutritional programs for real disease prevention and health maintenance, all this talk about health care “reform” is a sham, a continuation of the great American “con” game that has been our disease care system with constantly escalating costs mainly for toxic ineffective drugs.
President Obama does not have a very good track record with key health related appointments such as FDA Commissioner and Secretary of HHS that oversees the FDA, CDC, and other health agencies. FDA Commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, made over a million dollars sitting on the board of the Schein company that makes dental amalgam (50 % mercury). She also held on to her Schein stock until after the FDA declared dental amalgams to be safe and realized a nice profit as the stock price went up. In my view, her lack of honesty and integrity disqualifies her for this critical position that involves reviewing scientific studies that affect FDA approval of new drugs. There is already way too much fraud and deception in drug company sponsored research without adding the head of FDA with very questionable ethics.
Kathleen Sebelius whom Obama appointed to be Secretary of HHS last year was a major spokesperson for the H1N1 flu vaccine even though no proper safety studies or efficacy studies were done as the FDA rushed through the approval process for this very risky vaccine. Sebelius is a big advocate of vaccines even though vaccine research is loaded with fraud and deception. She also arrogantly slammed parents of autistic children who know that their children were neurologically damaged by mercury and other toxins in vaccines. I have no trust or confidence in her to head the HHS and the health agencies under it.
One of my big concerns about the new health care legislation is that these two women bureaucrats would have even greater power in the health/disease care arena than what they currently have. In my view, President Obama is clueless when it comes to science, health/disease care, drugs, and nutrition. Also, it is quite obvious that he has not hesitated at all to cut deals with the big drug companies. This legislation is sure to put billions more dollars in the pockets of big insurance and big drug companies with no great benefit to the public health. If anything, by covering more people with health insurance, this means that more people will become victims of mindless prescription drug writing by countless numbers of medical doctors who will be grasping at straws trying to figure out what is wrong with the patient. This is especially applicable in the “mental health” field.
The con artists (politicians, big insurance, and big drug companies) are doing very well with this new legislation. But, then again, what else is new in the land of the corrupt and the greedy? We could have done a lot better. But, that would require real reform of the corruption that involves Big Pharma's domination of Washington politics including the government's health bureauracracies. That’s my view about this landmark legislation.
Rick Malter, Ph.D.
3/22/2010