The day after President Obama’s first address to Congress in which he laid out his policy goals, the legions of spoilers (or lobbyists) descended into Washington to shore up their vested interests. Actually, there are three pharmaceutical lobbyists on K Street for every one representative and senator in Congress already.

The former chief executive of HCA Inc., in the interest of “patients’ rights”, unveiled a $20 million campaign to pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.
The former CEO of the largest private operator of health care facilities in the world, Richard Scott told The Wall Street Journal, “What you see is when the government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed.” Scott was introducing “Conservatives for Patients Rights.”

Actually, the free market has run out of money, as have all the patients so health-care is already rationed, Mr. Scott. A comment to the February 26 story by WSJ reader Tim Smith was right on target– when “free market” companies are upset by a change in government priorities, it’s because the “free market” companies are propped up by market restraints, and they have poor ability to compete on a true level playing field.

Only heavy consumer/patient participation in this process will ever make the health care field a level playing arena. Over the last four years health insurers and drug makers have “showered members of the 111th Congress with millions of dollars in campaign contributions,” The Washington Post reported on March 8. Of course, their focus for contributions is on leaders who will play major roles in shaping health-care legislation.

According to figures released by Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group, which analyzed the federal elections data, health insurers and their employees contributed $2.2 million to the top 10 recipients in the House and Senate since 2005. They were surpassed by Big Pharma and their employees which donated over $3.3 million to prime lawmakers.

Opposing universal health care for 100 years
Anyone who has followed the fate of health-care reform in the U.S. would only EXPECT this response from the vested interests. We have been talking about creating a universal health care plan for more than a century now, and as early as 1905 it was opposed by the AMA.

Over the decades the AMA has become so intertwined with the pharmaceutical industry that medical care has nearly become synonymous (in the US ONLY) with pharmaceutical drugs. The drug companies build and support the medical schools, begin with small gifts like pizza to the new interns and eventually give the practicing physicians dinners in fine restaurants, holiday trips, plus hefty “consulting” fees for providing nearly all the physicians’ continuing education programs. This has led the U.S. into the position of being four percent of the world’s population consuming 50 percent of the world’s production of pharmaceutical drugs.

Consumers are impatient, uneducated in options
And American patients are willing consumers of these toxic chemical cocktails that send over 700,000 to the ER every year and put 100,000 in their graves. We haven’t been educated to know any other means of taking care of ourselves. In one survey reported in The Archives of Internal Medicine last month, 37 percent of doctors complained that patients routinely demanded unnecessary prescriptions. Did the doctor explain in the usual 7-minute meeting any other way of getting well? Not likely, as they’ve been (U.S.) trained only in pharmaceuticals and who has the time?

We Americans also expect (and demand) a quick fix with the latest drug. We want Johnny cured right now so he can get back to school and we can get back to work. We’re impatient, for sure, but have we ever been told other means to regaining (and maintaining) health?

Medical costs are the leading cause of bankruptcies in the U.S., and in a recent biennial survey by the Commonwealth Foundation, 84 percent of us believed the health-care system needs a major or complete overhaul. The system needs a complete overhaul, yes, but so, too, do we patients need to be reducated regarding our responsibility in our own health, and we need to learn and practice the many alternatives to drugs. In this area, we’ll be leading the docs!

Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com