By Now, Most People Recognize that America has a Broken Health Care System
Writing for MedPage Today, medical doctor David Nash recently published an article titled Our Broken Healthcare System: How Scared Should We Be? Toxic Political Atmosphere, Entrenched Status Quo Discourage Serious Discussion. After mentioning a book about that oxymoronical mess we call EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE, as well as the two decade old study, TO ERR IS HUMAN (similar to the famous study titled DEATH BY MEDICINE), he referred to America’s broken health care system as “fragmented and dysfunctional“.
The study in the previous link is 15 years old, yet Nash quotes from Dr. Robert Pearl’s recent book (Why We Think We’re Getting Good Health Care—and Why We’re Usually Wrong) showing that thanks to phenomenon such as OVERDIAGNOSIS & OVERTREATMENT the practice of medicine is still the third leading cause of death in the US — “Medical error still accounts for close to 10% of all American deaths.”
Unfortunately, Nash and Pearl both propagate a common medical myth — that “disease prevention” is effective on any real level and that we should be spending tons more money on it. Although prevention sounds wonderful and intuitively makes sense; not only have I shown you over and over again that it’s false (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE), if you click the links you’ll get a small taste of just how brutally false it really is. Nash ends with these words about our broken health care system….
“My fear is that everyone — individuals, businesses, the healthcare industry, governmental leaders, and policy makers — is ignoring the symptoms of a chronically ill system because of the sheer exhaustion that comes with a toxic political environment and a deeply entrenched status quo.”
He’s right you know. But how do you fix this when it’s common knowledge that between 80 and 90% of all illness is self-induced; driven by poor diet and lifestyle choices —- usually by people who are all but totally sedentary, ABDOMINALLY OBESE, STRESSED TO THE MAX, and LIVING THE HIGH CARB LIFESTYLE. Speaking of living the high carb lifestyle, have you seen the recent article by the Nutrition Coalition (‘Big Pasta’ Cooks Up Self-Interested Nutrition Science)?
It seems that a multi-billion dollar pasta corporation, Barilla, has been cooking the scientific books so to speak via their homegrown “scientific” research organization known as the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN).
Among other things BCFN is calling for world-wide acceptance of a “plant-based diet,” repeatedly (and erroneously I might add) comparing GRAINS to VEGETATION, emphasizing over and over again that a diet that’s “healthy for the people is also healthy for the planet” (Good For You, Good for the Planet is the company’s slogan / motto). But it didn’t end there. After talking about the popularity of the KETOGENIC DIET cutting into profits, the Coalition article showed how ‘Big Pasta’ is trying to claim that not eating their product leads to both sickness and (gulp) death.
“The other side of appealing to hope, of course, is the invocation of fear. In a recent post citing only weak observational evidence, a BCNF-sponsored blog went so far as to suggest that dietary pasta is necessary to avoid death, asserting that ‘excluding high-carbohydrate foods can increase the risk of sickness and mortality.'”
The truth, however, is just the opposite. Hopefully by now my readers realize that it’s not the exclusion of “high carbohydrate” foods that causes illness and death, but the consumption / over-consumption of these foods that is so problematic; emblematic of our broken health care system.
For example, we know that sugar and high glycemic carbohydrates feed both cancer (HERE) and infections (HERE) —– something that becomes even more relevant once you realize how many chronic illnesses are being shown to be the result of chronic infection (ALZHEIMER’S, DISC HERNIATIONS, AUTISM & OTHER BRAIN DYSFUNCTIONS, PANDAS / PANS, LEUKEMIA & OTHER CHILDHOOD CANCERS, AS WELL AS A HOST OF AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES).
What I want you to grasp today is that there are two sides of the medical field — the ‘scientific’ research side and the practice side (HERE). For all intents and purposes, both sides are broken, providing a great example of our nation’s broken health care system. Case in point is the way that industry is creating pseudo-scientific organizations (in this case BCFN), hiring scientists that will do their bidding, and then creating studies to prove whatever they want.
A quick peek at Barilla’s 2017 annual report shows that they spent $400,000 on “external research” on pasta, and millions more on research inside of BCFN (their budget is just under 50 mil). I bring this up for one reason; this is how virtually all research is being done in America as well as a huge and rapidly growing chunk of the rest of the world.
Research is no longer trustworthy because it’s no longer done by unbiased, third-parties. Instead it’s being done by the very companies who are creating the products (food, pharmaceuticals, etc, etc) they are “studying”. Can we trust it?
Once you realize that fully half of all studies are never published (the half that don’t “prove” what industry is hoping to prove — a phenomenon known as INVISIBLE & ABANDONED) and that half of everything else (the body of research that we can actually see and have access to) cannot be reproduced either by the original research team or by other teams (HERE), we should wake up to the fact that virtually nothing coming from research funded or produced by big business can be trusted.
I guess my point is that your health is ultimately up to you. Be cautious about believing anything you read or hear (this site included). Check everything out — do your own research and be rigorous about it. If there is one thing I am being beat over the head with lately it’s that conventional wisdom is frequently wrong, including almost anything coming out of our corrupt and broken health care system.
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