US Insurance Giants Financed Anti Health Reform Campaign - Health Supreme NewsGrabs 18 November 2010
Health Insurance Industry Pumped $86 Million Into the US Chamber to Kill Reform
Bloomberg reporter Drew Armstrong broke an incredible story revealing that health insurance companies, like UnitedHealth and CIGNA, funneled $86.2 million into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 to pay for the Chamber's multifaceted campaign to kill President Obama's health reform legislation.In public, health insurance lobbyists and executives promised to support reform and work closely with reform advocates.
In private, the health insurance industry worked with conservative think tanks and media, right-wing front groups, and highly ideological trade associations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber to kill the bill. By using third party groups and ideological cover, the health insurance industry sought to trick Americans into hating reform.
... and many of them fell for the ruse, one might add.
Chinese medicine interests: EU Herbal Directive discriminates against non-European traditions and needs reform
The EU's Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD) was intended to provide a simplified registration process for traditional herbal medicines sold 'over the counter' (OTC), rather than following a practitioner consultation. Since the THMPD came into force in 2004, not a single Asian herbal medicinal product has been registered under the scheme. We are nearing the end of the 7-year transition period, meaning that all unregistered products will become (technically) illegal when the transition phase ends on 1 May 2011.The law of unintended consequences is in bright view here. Similar to what is happening with vitamin and mineral supplements, the European law passed to regulate herbs is incapable of accomodating the actual real-world situation in which we all are living.Those EU law-makers are living in a world of fantasy that has little to do with our everyday realities. The only solution seems to be to disregard their half-cooked "laws" en masse and continue on with our lives.
UK: MPs pledge support for campaign to save herbal medicine
A packed meeting at the UK House of Lords, organised by the pro-Ayurveda campaign group Save Herbal Medicine, received promises of continued support and assistance from several Lords and MPs.There was universal agreement among speakers and audience that the THMPD is not up to the job of regulating holistic, non-European systems of traditional medicine.
Pharma Faces Price Cuts In Germany
The pharmaceutical industry is facing $2.7 billion in price cuts in Germany, where lawmakers are set to approve the first price controls on newly approved meds. The law gives drugmakers one year to negotiate prices with insurers after new drugs are introduced, but if a deal isn't reached, the German Health Ministry will set maximum pricing, triggering a cost-benefit analysis.It looks like the free-for-all on pharma's prices and profits is destined to draw to a close. This decision by German law makers will have knock-on effects in many countries.And on a related note, there are noises being made in the US about curtailing the cost of drugs and medical interventions, here is the article: "Obama Fiscal Commission: Let's Raise Drug Rebates"
USA: Errors kill 15,000 aged patients a month: study
More than 13 percent of patients covered by Medicare, the government health insurance for the elderly, or about 134,000 people monthly have some sort of so-called adverse event each month. These include mistakes such as surgical errors or sometimes unavoidable problems such as an infection spread in the hospital, or patients having their blood sugar fall to unusually low levels.The new numbers, which total about 180,000 deaths a year, were presented in a report by the Office of Inspector General at the Health and Human Services Department. They support findings of a landmark Institute of Medicine report in 2000 that said up to 98,000 Americans died every year because of medical errors.
That dreadful fever may be good for you, NZ researchers discover
Study co-author Kyle Perrin said the results were striking, and showed that animals given drugs to fight a fever were more likely to die from flu. "The ones treated with anti-fever agents died at about a 30 per cent higher rate. It was as simple as that."The results led the team to believe fevers could be a natural protective mechanism which kicked in when animals had flu, to improve their chances of survival.
The study this winter would help them understand whether the same was true for humans.
This realization seems to be in line with the old saying to "feed a fever, starve a cold".Actually, there seems to be a lot of confusion ... even about whether the old saying is one way around or the other. (Some say it's "starve a fever, feed a cold".)
What makes sense to me is that a fever is the body's defense mechanism against microbes getting too numerous. They get inactivated/killed by the higher temperature which they can't survive. So "feed a fever" to me would mean give the body enough fuel to do its thing, i.e. increase temperature to fight off the infection.
Pharmaceutical medicine gives us drugs to lower the fever. These should - in my view - be reserved only for extreme cases, where a fever is getting so high it endangers the organism's survival. So the meds have a place, but only in exceptional circumstances.
"Starving" a cold makes sense in the way that a cold is a period of elimination of toxins and internal pollution. To let a cold 'run its course' seems sensible, and of course you would not add a lot of food when someone has a cold ... it would be a distraction to have to digest and assimilate, while trying actually to eliminate accumulated toxins and impurities.
The article linked "The dreaded fever may be good for you" seems to confirm that sentiment.
Quote: Study co-author Kyle Perrin said the results were striking, and showed that animals given drugs to fight a fever were more likely to die from flu. "The ones treated with anti-fever agents died at about a 30 per cent higher rate. It was as simple as that."
and...
"When you review everything it seems pretty clear to us that the presence of a fever response in all animals, including humans, is protective."
Vitamin C And The Law
by Thomas E. Levy, M.D., J.D.
Any physician, or panel of hospital-based physicians, claiming that vitamin C is experimental, unapproved, and/or posing unwarranted risks to the health of the patient, is really only demonstrating a complete and total ignorance or denial of the scientific literature. A serious question as to what the real motivations might be in the withholding of such a therapy then arises.A doctor has the right to refuse to see you or treat you. A doctor does not have the right to deny you any therapy that is inexpensive and known to be effective and nontoxic; if there is toxicity involved, the patient can discharge his responsibility for such toxicity with proper informed consent. A doctor does not have the right to deny you consultation with another doctor that may have conflicting medical points of view.
Vitamin C: A potential life-saving treatment for sepsis
Research led by Dr. Karel Tyml and his colleagues at The University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research Institute have found that vitamin C can not only prevent the onset of sepsis, but can reverse the disease.Well - it's good to see the mainstream starting to catch up with the rest of us.Of course if they had paid more close attention to the proponents of orthomolecular medicine, the life saving treatment might well have been in use for years if not decades already...
Sodium Bicarbonate in Kidney Disease: How Much Evidence is Enough?
As physicians, wouldn't it be nice to get away from practicing the "cookbook" type medicine so often being promulgated by the agencies which determine reimbursements, or worse yet, writing endless scripts for some medicine engraved on the side of a gift novelty pen. Of course, if a patient with CKD comes in who has a high bicarbonate ion level such a treatment would not likely be appropriate. I am not a nephrologist, perhaps there are other reasons to avoid such a treatment. But wouldn't it be nice to put all those long years of study, training and clinical experience into actual practice as opposed to practicing medicine based on clinical guidelines put together by a physician's assistant working part time for a Health Maintenance Organization?
When Doctors go on strike mortality decreases
The articles analyzed five strikes around the world, all between 1976 and 2003. The strikes lasted between nine days and seventeen weeks. All reported that mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases, after the strike. None found that mortality increased during the weeks of the strikes compared to other time periods.
Video: Fluoride "a social experiment started 40 years ago"
Mercury Linked to Alzheimer's Disease
The authors of the review use numerous peer-reviewed studies to suggest that a genetic predisposition and exposure to a neurotoxin such as mercury have to co-exist for Alzheimer's disease to manifest itself. Dr. Richard Deth, co-author and professor of neuro-pharmacology at Northeastern University in Boston, explains: "Since the brain is more vulnerable to oxidative stress than any other organ, it is not surprising that mercury, which promotes oxidative stress, is an important risk factor for brain disorders." Dr. Deth's motto: "Mercury is bad for the brain."
Skeptics in medicine: Are medical students being manipulated by Astroturfers?
On Monday 1 November 2010 in the Republic of Ireland, an event that seems to have been designed to manipulate the minds of young, impressionable medical students appears to have backfired. In a debate jointly hosted by the University College Cork (UCC) Philosophical Society and Medical Society, a motion entitled "That this house believes alternative medicine does more harm than good" was defeated by a two-thirds majority...
Medical Journals Complicit in Corruption of Medicine
When we observed that not only the pharmaceutical industry, but physician-scientists, academic institutions, and medical journals are all invested in "keeping up appearances" rather than preserving the integrity of science, and honest medicine, we were ridiculed or dismissed as being "anti-science."We are no longer "blowing in the wind." A growing number of prominent physician-scientists, including several former journal editors, and New York Times columnists, have written sobering critiques about the corrupting impact pharmaceutical industry influence has had on medicine. That influence has debased the integrity of medical research, clinical practice and medicine's institutions.
Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest are Disguised
The American Psychiatric Association, in its 240 page guide to its May annual meeting, "forgot" to mention the conflicts of interest of its own president Alan Schatzberg, MD. It had to print them on the newsletter circulated the third day of the meeting. Nor were names even alphabetized for easy information retrieval. (Schatzberg is financially linked to Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Pfizer, Forest, Takeda, Sanofi-Aventis and eight other companies.)
Incarcerated kids drugged with antipsychotics
However, Kelly reports that critics believe most of these diagnoses are simply a cover for the fact that prisons now use drugs as a substitute for the banned physical restraints that were once used on juveniles who aggressively acted out."Fifty years ago, we were tying kids up with leather straps, but now that offends people, so instead we drug them," Robert Jacobs, a former Florida psychologist and lawyer who now practices psychology in Australia, told Kelly.
"We cover it up with some justification that there is some medical reason, which there is not," he said.
ADHD: Ritalin - Brain damage, heart attacks, hallucinations & liver damage
On March 21, 2000, a 14-year-old boy dropped dead of a heart attack while skateboarding. The ninth-grader had been on Ritalin since the first grade. The father of the youngster has testified that he and his wife were forced by Michigan Social Services to put their child on Ritalin or else be charged for neglecting their son's educational and emotional needs...
HPV Vaccine: Why Are So Few People Getting Vaccinated?
Yet, an alarming new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine finds sadly very few young women are protecting themselves from cancer and taking this precaution of the HPV vaccine. This study led by Dr. J. Kathleen Tracy found that less 30 percent of young women eligible for the vaccine will chose to get it. Added to that, of the women who do initiate getting vaccinated less than one-third complete the series of three booster shots required for full protection of the virus.Might it just be that more and more people are waking up to the fact that they are being bamboozled by the vaccine brigades?Apart from the side effects of the vaccine - where is the evidence that it actually reduces incidence of cancer? No, not the "pre-cancerous lesions" but the actual thing. You will look in vain for studies of that one.
The HPV vaccine is an experiment, no matter how they spin it.
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"The individual is supreme and finds the way through intuition"
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Thursday November 18 2010
updated on Tuesday December 13 2011URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2010/11/18/us_insurance_giants_financed_anti_health_reform_campaign_health_supreme_newsgrabs_18_november_2010.htm
