Real Healthcare Reform
by Rod Van Mechelen

Healthcare: The status quo
President Obama says that the American Healthcare System is broken. Most Americans agree. But while the debate over reform rages, some of the worst problems go largely ignored.

The American Prescription Drug Cartel costs consumers billions. Mainstream medicine lags 25 years behind the leading edge and is mired in a drug culture. The FDA punishes those who tell the truth and rewards those who lie. And our healthcare system ignores several very important factors.

This is the status quo. Change nothing and the quality of our care will continue to decline. Change everything else but this, and our care will continue to decline. Only by changing these things will the status quo change for the better.

Prescription Drug Cartel costs consumers billions
The American Prescription Drug Cartel, referred to by many as "Big Pharma," employs the Federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to artificially jack up the price of admission to produce and sell prescription drugs. They use the FDA to force non-drug competition out of business, suppress information that is important to consumers, and threaten, harass and in extreme cases confiscate the legal inventory of legitimate non-drug businesses.

For example:

They attack the rights of Americans to learn how to eat healthy and live better:

On October 17, 2005, the FDA warned Michigan cherry growers to stop touting the health benefits of cherries or face dire consequences. -- Why Is the FDA Picking On Cherries?, Life Extension Magazine, March 2006

More recently, the FDA is attacking General Mills, threatening to regulate Cheerios (yes, Cheerios) as a prescription drug because General Mills is telling the truth: Cheerios: Available at a Pharmacy Near You?, The Heritage Foundation, July 3, 2009

Solely to guarantee drug company profits, they ban or restrict nutritional supplements:

• FDA Seeks to Ban Pyridoxamine, Life Extension Magazine, July 2009


• FDA Declares Form of Vitamin B6 a Drug, Effectively Banning Pyridoxamine from Dietary Supplements, NaturalNews, February 12, 2009


• Collusion to Ban Vitamins, Life Enhancement, July 2009


• The FDA Ban of L-Tryptophan: Politics, Profits and Prozac, Life Extension Magazine, April 6 1998


• Collusion to Ban Vitamins, Life Enhancement, July 2009


• The FDA's Cruel Hoax, Life Extension Magazine, April 2008

To increase profits and subsidize their international markets, the Cartel engages in government enforced prescription drug price gouging:

As a condition of doing business in other countries, drug companies are required to sell their products at a reasonable mark up above cost. To subsidize their research and bolster profits, the Cartel jacks up their prices in America:

• The Great American Rip-Off: High Drug Prices...Courtesy of the FDA, Life Extension Magazine, June 1999


• Are We to Become Serfs of the Drug Monopoly?, Life Extension Magazine, February 2000


• Consumer Rape, Life Extension Magazine, April 2002


• The FDA Versus The American Consumer, Life Extension Magazine, October 2002


• The Generic Drug Rip Off, Life Extension Magazine, August 2009

Protection Racket: To protect the Cartel's oligopoly over the American market, the FDA severely limits Americans' ability to import prescription drugs for personal use at much lower prices. This has to change.

Fox guarding the chicken coop: A new law gives jurisdiction over tobacco to the FDA. This is the same FDA that routinely acts to protect the profits of the Cartel at the expense of consumer health. Everybody knows tobacco abuse kills millions and costs taxpayers billions, yet we allow this to continue. This has to change.

VooDoo Healthcare: Modern medicine is gradually shifting from the old disease maintenance model toward wellness. But progress is agonizingly slow. Much of what passes for "cutting edge" medicine today is 25 years out of date. This has to change.

Drug Culture: On PBS, leading edge doctors explain why diet, exercise and nutritional supplementation should generally take priority over prescribing drugs. Yet, the medical and healthcare industries remain focused primarily on drugs. They are mired in a drug culture. This has to change.

Acceptable Lies; Unacceptable Truths: While the FDA attacks food companies for telling the truth when it harms the Cartel's interests (see above), it allows food companies to lie when the lies are in the Cartel's interests. In cute TV commercials, for instance, the Corn Refiners Association pooh-poohs criticism of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), but HFCS is a pervasive food additive that, like tobacco, is harmful. (Metabolic Danger of High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Life Extension Magazine, December 2008) Consequently, Metabolic Syndrome and Type II Diabetes are becoming common, and that benefits the Cartel. This has to change.

Health Equity: In the long term, our entire healthcare system needs to expand to include Health Equity, which takes all relevant factors into account to produce optimum health for everybody. Even though this will ultimately lead to an overall reduction in healthcare costs and an increase in overall health, there is widespread resistance. This has to change.

Is Government the problem?
With all the fuss and fighting over universal versus private healthcare, the relative superiority of this system or that, they all ignore the fact that healthcare is supposed to be primarily about healing and health. When it comes to the basics, like fixing broken bones, healing wounds, curing infections and some diseases, our healthcare system does a pretty good job. But it has become obsessed with sustaining rather than healing chronic illnesses, and with disease rather than maintaining health.

Meanwhile, the Cartel seems bent on destroying old non-drug cures to open those markets for their drugs, many of which do not cure the underlying illnesses but only mask their symptoms. It may be a stretch to call that evil, or would it? Millions of Americans suffer needlessly from Metabolic Syndrome and Type II Diabetes. Is that evil? I think so.

As a conservative with libertarian tendencies, I see how the federal government has colluded with corporations to rip off consumers, and I prefer to think that a free market could right these wrongs. But we need to be realistic: it will take the authority of government to restore balance to the marketplace.

Is change for the better likely?
Will the government represent the best interests of the American people and resolve these issues? Almost certainly not.

We should expect more of the same. More drugs that mask symptoms but do not cure. More companies penalized for educating consumers about the health benefits of food. More nutritional supplements taken away and reclassified as prescription drugs to profit the Cartel. Higher prices, lower quality, and poorer health.

But President Obama promised that he would bring change that we can believe in. We should hope that he will.

We should hope and demand that he stands up to the powerful American Prescription Drug Cartel and that his healthcare reform will include changing the FDA into an agency that serves the American people instead of Cartel profits.

We should hope and expect him to bring American Medicine into the 21st Century.

We should hope and ask for him to put healing and wellness front and center and end the medical obsession with disease maintenance.

We should prepare for the worst, but we should still hope for the best. Because that is what he promised, and that would be nice, for a change.