|
|
| LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT PART 2 HEALTH CARE REFORM by Lane Sebring, M. D. | | Dear President Obama,
I would like to provide you with more information on how to cut health care costs dramatically. I envision healthcare of the future as one that provides excellent emergency care but most of the chronic care will be eliminated because it will become unnecessary. I will explain to you how this is possible. A short history of health of mankind is necessary to understand what I'm talking about. Approximately 10,000 years ago all humans were hunter gatherers. If you study current day hunter gathers, those people that grow none of their food, you will find that they are stunningly healthy. They are virtually devoid of the chronic diseases that plague us today. That would include cancer, heart disease, arthritis of old age or autoimmune origin, tooth decay, osteoporosis and they are much less affected by a general loss of functionality with the aging process. I hope you find this curious. It becomes more understandable when you realize that chronic disease and the marked functional decline with aging is unique to humans although it is certainly seen in some of our domesticated animals. We share these maladies with them for the same reason. Please recognize that chronic diseases are quite rare among wild animals, particularly those living on a pristine part of the planet. The reason humans began with chronic disease 10,000 years ago was due to a serious alteration in our natural diet. We went from a hunter gatherer diet which consisted mainly of wild game, vegetables and fruits and nuts to a grain-based diet. This was the beginning of the chronic diseases of aging. Osteoporosis is virtually unknown prior to the introduction of grains and to the diet. Tooth decay became much more of a problem, we lost an average of six to 7 inches in height when and wherever grains were introduced into the diet. We ended up with smaller brains because of narrowed skulls and the resulting narrowed jaw was no longer large enough to hold all of our teeth so crooked teeth enter the archaeological record and modern people need their wisdom teeth removed to prevent overcrowding. A second insult came with grain feeding our livestock so that we make the animals sick before we eat them. If we change the diet and learn to grow much of our own food at home and personal gardens and stop grain feeding our livestock it would cut back dramatically and I mean dramatically on chronic diseases. It would also help lower greenhouse gases.
The idea we Americans have about drugs being required to stay healthy is a commercial aberration. The cholesterol hoax is exactly that. Cholesterol forums on injured areas of our arteries for the purpose of providing a temporary patch to prevent a blowout. The patch is temporary and would be replaced if the person ate a higher protein diet and had a considerably higher intake of vitamin C. You see heart disease is a form of scurvy and as such is just as easily prevented. Most animals make their own vitamin C and only those animals who do not make vitamin C get heart disease like we do and only when they don't get enough vitamin C. For reference a 40 pound dog will make an average of 10 to 20,000 mg a day of vitamin C. I can show you how to clean out clogged arteries for pennies a day. Shhhhhhhhh, don't tell the cardiologists or the drug companies, they're going to squeal like a mashed cat. One stent generally costs around $70,000 before all is said and done and bypass surgery is considerably over $100,000.
I've already said that the new diet will rapidly reduce or eliminate the need for drugs but for those patients who are too far down the road of chronic disease, the generics will work just fine. You see, it has been a game I have been watching for many years. When the patent on a drug nears expiration, pharmaceutical companies have several strategies to turn doctors away from continuing its use. They show an incremental increase in benefit from a new drug by simply making the dose of the new drug high enough to win the comparison but it costs $140 a month instead of the $10. Another strategy is to finally reveal the accumulated negative data about the old drug that is soon to go generic. This puts doctors at risk of looking like they're committing malpractice if they continue to prescribe it.
We must stop the coup of our medical schools by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry donates many millions of dollars each year to these universities resulting in the educators working for the pharmaceutical industry. Objective education is not to be found there.
The pharmaceutical industry has taken over our medical journals. You could expose that fact and doctors must learn this fact and seek better sources of information. The physician to physician forums are an excellent way for the arts and sciences to advance in exactly the direction it needs to go. I used to enjoy going to www.POL.net to discuss difficult patients and helpful strategies with other doctors. It became in part an alternative medicine website because the alternative medicine doctors had more answers for the traditional doctors who had already tried all the drugs. It was purchased and shut down by Web M. D. which of course is owned and run by the pharmaceutical industry. I downloaded a site where Web M. D.'s business plan included the need to absorb sites like www.POL.net and then listed it among two others. One day when I went to www.POL.net it took me straight to Web M. D. and within three weeks Web M.D. had shut it down completely. In an attempt to continue this wonderful physician resource and method of advancing medicine I have started a physician to physician forums at www.sebringclinic.com.
This model for healthcare will drastically reduce the need for healthcare in our country. It gives patients back the responsibility for their health and will show them a plan that makes sense, is simple and they can easily follow.
I hope these ideas stimulate your interest. Maybe we could talk about the food industry and the amazing damage to our health.
Sincerely, Lane Sebring M. D.
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|